this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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[โ€“] [email protected] 26 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (6 children)

Same principle as a gyroscope: a turning wheel will tend to stay perpendicular or parallel to the direction of the gravity vector because if it starts tilting away from such orientation there's a force that pushes it back.

Also works better with bigger wheels (if I remember it correctly the effect is related to spinning momentum).

I was pretty surprised when learning Physics and they show us how to derive the formula for that (which I totally forgot since that was over 3 decades ago).

Edit: Actually the gyroscopic effetc is just a part of it. See this article

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Gyroscopic effect is not even significant. Lock your steering and you will fall over no matter how fast your wheels are spinning. (Which can happen with a badly pitted headset)

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