This bicycle, called the „RELATIVITY Special“, if pedaled at 90 rpm, is designed to travel faster than the speed of light. This is mathematically proven by the description of the gear ratios on the sheets seen on the wall behind it.

One revolution of the pedals theoretically sends the bike 6 times around the earth.

It is part of the art exhibition „Circle of Time“ that Pat Chirapravati curated 2016 at California State University, Sacramento.

It purely theoretical and would not work – like some comments pointed out (just citing without being sure it true):

The failure points are pretty obvious, it would require the mass of something like 37 Jupiters the chain is not nearly strong enough to deal with that kind of force of course neither is the frame or wheels. The force needed to turn the pedals with the bike upside down will still require the force of like a hydraulic press just to barely be able to get the wheel to turn under no load.

This is actually true expect for the speed of light part, however, the amount of energy that would be required to paddle it once would be enough to power up England for 3 full days. That’s if chains were unbreakable.

Unfortunately when you get up around 3,000 miles per hour or just a tiny fraction of the theoretical top speed , the bike is going to melt or burst into flame.

Ok so 12 chain rings. Assume diameter of 8”. Driving sprocket of say 3” allowing for bearings. Sprocket drives next chainring and so on. So each chainset offers a ratio of 2 2/3: 1. To the power of 12 this is an overall ratio of 129307:1 To pedal at the speed of light, with a 28” wheel would require a cadence of approx 61,000 per minute… Unless they are doing something extra clever with the gearing, I think you’d need even more gears- about another seven 8”:3” combos- to get the pedals down to a more reasonable 60 strokes a minute. Assuming power transfer of 97.6% for each stage of the 19 stages, you’d need 158 people pushing on the same pedals to get the same power output at the wheels of a normal bike. Assumes no air friction and quite a few other things.

When a wheeled vehicle is in motion, the section of the wheel making contact with the ground is at ZERO speed. However the part of the wheel at the apex (top of the wheel is moving forward at twice the speed. That means if the bike is going the speed of light, the top of the wheels are going at twice the speed of light.

Doppler Blue-shift might make it hard to navigate. On the other hand, you’d make a spectacular meteor, if only for an instant!

So funny that someone thought it needed a bike lock

Still a fun design.

Tags: Fahrrad, Kunst, Technologie