Veerle's blog

The answer is NO it doesn’t!  What is the worse possible geometric shape to make an item roll?  A square. Well guess what, even a bicycle with squared wheels can ride like a charm… that is of course if the road exists of a sequence of jarring bumps. Stan Wagon, a mathematician at McAlester College in St. Paul, Minn., has a bicycle with square wheels that runs smoothly. His secret lays in the shape of the road over which the wheels roll. A square wheel can roll smoothly, keeping the axle moving in a straight line and at a constant velocity, if it travels over evenly spaced bumps of just the right shape.

However steering remains a bit difficult. Hold on… switch to fantasy mode with me ... Imagine you are driving with your car and the traditional bicycle lanes now have these weird looking bumps. For safety it wouldn’t be that bad because cars won’t cross it without noticing it.

But then again, if I see all those people riding those weird looking bikes, it could very well be some kind of a scene out of a Monty Python movie. I think it’s safe to say that we won’t see this in a nearby future. Guess this proves that people can do weird things with their free time ;-)