THE VIDEO SHELF · bicycle stability
How Do Bikes Stay Up?
A short minutephysics video explaining why bicycles stay upright. It looks at gyroscopic precession, head angle and centre of mass, and shows that bikes self-steer toward the direction they lean.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN people link it as a quick, clear answer to the question of bicycle stability, including in threads on bike mathematics.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- minutephysics
- Topic
- bicycle stability
- Format
- explainer
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 5
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2016–2024
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
The surprising thing is that it is way more than "a few feet" . Apologies for repeating myself, but watch [VIDEO] (And that is not on smooth terrain) And nitpick: typical bicycles aren't symmetric left-right. The chain and gears make them heavier at the right. …
Someone on Hacker News · 2016-07
In Fresh work on the mathematics of bicycles in motionBicycles are surprisingly stable as long as they are able to maintain some momentum. minutephysics had a great video about this too: How Do Bikes Stay Up?: [VIDEO]
ramanan on Hacker News · 2016-11
In The stability of the bicycle (2006)
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.