This plastic bicycle was a whimsical design exercise in making a complex 3D object from flat 2D sheets of polycarbonate. It’s heavy and cumbersome, and rides like a wet noodle, but Wonder Woman wouldn’t be caught riding anything else.

properties of metals were very obviously important to the practice of engineering.

Riding my bike taught me about the physical universe. For a period, my friends and I irrationally thought it uncool to have brakes (not that brakes were very good in those days anyway), so we would remove the brakes and use the soles of our shoes rubbed directly on the rear wheel as the slowing mechanism. From this, I quickly learnt about friction, heat, and energy dissipation. I remember multiple trips to the shoe store with a disgruntled mother intrigued as to how I could wear out my shoes in only a month with such an unusual wear pattern.

My friends and I worshipped the older boys in the neighborhood who had fancier bicycles and could make them do the impossible, like doing a “wheelie” — riding on the rear wheel only — from one end of the street to the other. Then came the fantasy of the “bunny hop” — jumping the bicycle without a ramp or gutter. Only years later would I learn that this is a non-trivial trick of physics and requires timing the movement of the center of mass carefully.

Photograph by Saul Griffith

In high school, my favorite class was technical drawing. We did the high school equivalent of basic structural analysis, and learned drafting skills with pencil, paper, drawing board, and a bevy of protractors, compasses, and guides. Naturally, at the first open project we had, I labored for weeks with the design of a bicycle. Learning geometric principles with passion, I drew complete technical specifications and what would be my first industrial design rendering. (I like to fancy that the work of my imagi-

nation was a precursor to the carbon fiber monocoque frames that soon after became the fashion in Olympic track cycling.) I would ride endlessly around the velodrome in our neighborhood, and along with my friends, I would fantasize of sporting glory while learning the principles of centripetal forces on the sloped oval track.

I may not have gone to the Olympics, but to this day I still build my own bicycles, whether from the cherry components I’ve always dreamed of, or by starting from scratch. I’ve made bicycles entirely out of plastic, built wooden bicycles, and even designed a bicycle “Lego” kit of basic frame components that can be reconfigured into all sorts of different geometries. Bikes haven’t stopped teaching me new things: I first welded on a bike frame, and I learnt much about energy efficiency by analyzing bicycles as a transportation alternative. (If you can do only one thing for the environment this year, let it be giving up your car for the bike, or at least picking up your bike helmet instead of your keys a few times a week.)

What more can I say? I love bicycles. I love the feeling of speeding silently under my own power. Maybe what I’d like to say is that, more than love, I owe the bicycle. I owe it a debt of gratitude. As a growing engineer, it encompassed nearly every principle of science and engineering that fascinated me. Long live the bicycle! Long live those who tinker with them, even when they make mistakes.

Saul Griffith works with the power nerds at Squid Labs.

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