The Lighted Bike

I am taking the Design and Engineering course and this is the second unit’s action project. In this unit we have learned about movement, energy, and gear ratios. This all came together as an action project to design a new bike for a person that you were given. The challenging part about this project was the brainstorming of ideas since the bike has been around for so long and changed so much. Building the model was also tricky but in the end it all came together.

I had to design a bike for a student named Andres whose grandma wanted to buy a bike for him. She wanted the bike to be safe and comfortable to ride because Andres has to ride through grass and over potholes to get to school everyday. He also needed the bike to be able to sit out in the rain because he was going to store it alongside his house.

JC: Bike Model (2014)

How I went about designing his bike was by taking his problems and looking at what part of the bike I needed to fix to solve his problem. I started with the tires and chose to use a tire that was twice the thickness of a normal mountain bike wheel,5 inches, because they would help him have a smoother ride and better traction so that he wouldn’t fall as much. The tires also would allow him to roll over small potholes more easily because he wouldn’t drop as frequently. The ride would be smoother because the bumps would have less of an effect on the tires and the bike.

I also wanted to include shocks on the bike because I know that it creates a much smoother ride and there is less stress on your body. I would also include gears on this bike because my friend, Danny, during his interview said “Fixed riding is for when you only stay on streets…” implying that he doesn’t use gears when riding on the street but he would if he were to go off-road.

Another modification that I would make would be to appeal to Andres’ comfort by making a seat out of a synthetic foam with a light plastic covering, like the one found on the outside of rain jackets, so that you could wipe it off and it would be dry.

The other change that I would make would be a lighting system for riding during dusk. The lights will be larger than normal bike lights so that the biker can see more. The bike will have a set of turn signals below the seat that extends out slightly. The buttons to control these will be on the handlebars next to the brakes. Also there will be a headlight that lights up the ground in front of him so that he can see if there are any potholes or anything that he needs to avoid and so drivers can see him. The headlight is turned in by a switch on the handlebar. These lights would provide Andres with the safest riding experience because it would alert all cars of his position well before they would normally see him.

The model of the bike that I made was supposed to be at a 1cm-3 in scale except the cardboard couldn’t be cut that small so I had to use a different scale for the body of the bike. It was pretty difficult to cut the cardboard right and get it to be the same size as the other pieces.

JC:Model Bike (2014)

   The bike will have a 30 inch diameter for its wheels and the circumference will be 94.2 inches. Since he lives a mile from school the bike would need 674 rotations to get him there. Since the average biker rides at about 12-15 miles an hour but Andres’ tiresare bigger I’m guessing his biking speed is 10-11MpH which is 4.917-4.470 Meters per Second.