reason behind the auto balancing nature of bicycle. After the research of the 19 th century accepted views on this phenomena are the carter effect, Gyroscopic Effect and self-stabilization due to the arrangement of parts in such a manner. Thus we continue our study on the above facts and check how does these phenomena helps bicycle to balance itself. Thus we started with Gyroscopic Effect, so what actually happens in bicycle is that front wheel acts like a gyroscope and when bicycle lean to the right, the gyroscope applies the torque, which turns the handlebars to the right and causes the steering to move in the direction of the lean bringing the wheels back under the bicycle and holding it up same happens when bicycle leans to the left and thus bicycle can hold itself up. Now lets talk about the caster effect, it is actually a self-aligning effect to keep the steering straight and also due to this effect the steering of the bicycle follows the lean of the bicycle to keep it up. This is because the wheel's ground contact point is behind the steering point and thus wheel trails behind (The front wheel of the bicycle also
touches the ground a little [behind] where the
steering axis hits the ground) If the bicycle direction changes when it's going forward, the wheel will tend to follow and bring itself back under the rider. Now what happens if we try to counter these effects in bicycle, like if we construct a bicycle which has counter rotating wheels and thus net angular momentum of gyroscopic wheel is zero and thus gyroscopic effect is absent in the bicycle but still the bicycle can balance itself and now the question arises is it due to the carter effect, thus we tried to see whether it is true or not and later we found that a bicycle was constructed which had a negative trail and thus against the carter effect but was able to balance itself even in the absence of the carter effect. At last we will conclude to the point that the bicycle can balance itself in the absence of the carter effect or the gyroscopic effect but such bicycle cannot be used for riding and thus for the balance of the normal bicycle carter effect and gyroscopic effect play a crucial role and help bicycle balance itself even without a rider. BY Archit Sharma (B14EE007) Daval Pargal (B14CS014)