Alan Turing using math to repair his bike
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Alan Turing using math to repair his bike
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Re: Alan Turing using math to repair his bike
#2> And in Turing’s case, it was further complicated by the fact that he always wore a gas mask as he rode, to prevent triggering his allergies. But the alarm clock he was known to wear around his waist might have helped.
What? Is that for real?
Edit: It is!
> He loved to ride his bicycle through the countryside. To time himself, he would simply tie an alarm clock around his waist. During the war, according to I.J. Good, a Cambridge mathematician, Turing suffered horribly from hay fever during the first week of June every year. So to keep the pollen off while riding, he wore a military gas mask.
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/1999/06/09/alan-turin...
Re: Alan Turing using math to repair his bike
#3This anecdote is memorably presented as an application of modular arithmetic (along with the behavior of Enigma machine rotors) in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. See the discussion in this review of the book: https://www.ams.org/notices/199911/rev-kasman.pdf
Re: Alan Turing using math to repair his bike
#4[deleted]
Re: Alan Turing using math to repair his bike
#5Thanks for the fun story. I began appreciating mathematics and sincerely loving it due to the biographies of mathematicians like Sir Isaac Newton in Veritasium channel.
Re: Alan Turing using math to repair his bike
#6Kind of reminded me of the traditional wisdom that you should select chains and sprocket to avoid patterned wear. I don't know if there is an effect (especially with bikes and their low torque),but I always think about it when changing my chain. I suppose this only applies to single sprocket bike.
Re: Alan Turing using math to repair his bike
#7Kind of reminded me of the traditional wisdom that you should select chains and sprocket to avoid patterned wear. I don't know if there is an effect (especially with bikes and their low torque),but I always think about it when changing my chain. I suppose this only applies to single sprocket bike.
Isn't this only relevant for fixed gear bikes, where you can skid the rear wheel to brake, and you want maximize the number of possible "skid patches", or orientations of the rear wheel while the pedals are in a fixed position?
Re: Alan Turing using math to repair his bike
#8[deleted]
Re: Alan Turing using math to repair his bike
#9Kind of reminded me of the traditional wisdom that you should select chains and sprocket to avoid patterned wear. I don't know if there is an effect (especially with bikes and their low torque),but I always think about it when changing my chain. I suppose this only applies to single sprocket bike.
This is called "hunting tooth". It applies to any system of gears or timing belts.
In gears, if you make sure the number of teeth of mating gears is coprime then you wear the teeth of one gear evenly against the other gear. If there are low factors, then each tooth of one gear only engages with a small number of teeth on the other gear, exacerbating wear.
With belts, if the number of teeth on the belt shares low factors with the number of teeth on either of the pulleys then you get the same effect: any given tooth on the belt only ever meshes with a small number of teeth on the pulley.
Re: Alan Turing using math to repair his bike
#10No post body was provided.