Why-Exactly-Is-a-Bicycle-Stable Experiments

David Jones some years ago assaulted humanity’s embarrassing lack of understanding of why moving bicycles are so stable. Jones performed a series of experiments, from which he learned some surprising things. He revealed them in this article:

“The Stability of the Bicycle,” David E.H. Jones, Physics Today, April 1970, pp. 34-40.

(Thanks to Catherine Klauss and Davide Castelvecci for bringing this to our attention.)

BONUS: David Jones delivered a 24/7 Lecture on the giant topic “Science”, in the 2001 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.

BONUS: Here’s a video made much later by Andy Ruina, addressing advances on the bicycle question forty years after David Jones had brought the physics world up to cruising speed: