StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI: Extended Classic: The Physics of the Tour de France

Episode Date: July 13, 2017

Now updated for the 2017 race: Aerodynamics, Newton’s Laws, drafting, power to weight ratio, nutrition, technology and more! Get smarter about the Tour de France with hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly and their guests Lance Armstrong, Neil deGrasse Tyson and John Eric Goff.Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Subscribe to our channels on:Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360?mt=2GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjqSoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-scienceStitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-scienceTuneIn: http://www.tunein.com/playingwithscienceNOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/ Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly, and I'm Chuck Nice, and this is Playing With Science. I'm Gary O'Reilly, and I'm Chuck Nice, and this is Playing With Science. Yes it is, today on Playing With Science we ride. So fill up your water bottle, get your lycra on. It is centuries old and said to be the most efficient means of transport known to humankind. It is centuries old and said to be the most efficient means of transport known to humankind. Pretty simple, really. A wheel at each end, somewhere to sit, and something to steal with.

Yes, very simple, but not so simple, because, you know, cycling is now one of the most sophisticated sports on the planet. And it's loaded, and I mean loaded, with lots of tech. But don't worry, you're not going to miss out on that. We have a whole other show that's going to be devoted to the tech of cycling. Oh yeah, but for now, we'll be exploring the physics of the Tour de France, which is a test of man's endurance, man's need for speed while not falling off, and with more twists and turns and devious strategies than an Agatha Christie novel. I see what you did there. Did you?

Yeah, I like that. That was good, yeah. To explore this lesser-known world, we sent the intrepid Neil deGrasse Tyson to meet with what some might say is a controversial figure in the sport. We know him simply as Lance Armstrong. And to help us dig further into the amazing science of cycling

is Eric Goff, physics professor at Lynchburg College, author of Gold Medal Physics, The Science of Sport, and all-round cycling guru. Eric, welcome back to the show. Glad to be here. Hey, buddy, how are you, man? Thanks for coming back. I'm doing great. How are you? We are good.

You're a big, huge cycling guy? Yeah. Sure, I love cycling. Okay. All right. You know, we have Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is doing an interview with Lance Armstrong. You're going to be hearing clips of that, Eric, and we're going to ask you to respond to it.

But before we go into the show, I think it's important that we do address the fact that we are talking to Lance Armstrong. Some of you out there listening right now are like, why? What's up with that? This guy has done this and he's done that. We're not here to litigate those things. The one thing that is for sure, and Eric, you as a huge cycling fan, will either confirm or denounce this.

If you're talking to somebody about cycling, you can't talk to anyone more knowledgeable than Lance Armstrong. I agree. You're not going to win seven Tour de France's in a row without knowing something about the sport. Absolutely. For sure. So Lance Armstrong and doping is a sentence that we have heard over a number of years, but don't think we are going to swerve it. We will be coming back in a future show and addressing exactly that topic. Absolutely. Don't think climate science has dropped out on that one.

Yeah, we're not dodging anything because we're going to actually talk about doping and performance enhancement. Yeah. I like to call it performance enhancement. You know, I'm not a dope. I'm smart enough to enhance my performance. All right. So, Eric, every year you model the Tour de France, and that must consist of a number of different layers and approaches,

apart from just saying, that guy there, see him? No, the one on the left, he's the one that's going to win. So how do you go about modeling for a three-week race like the Tour de France? So the Tour de France puts online the stage profiles, the 21 stage profiles, and that's a starting point for us to model the terrain of each stage. And what we're after is the winning time for every stage. We're not trying to model a specific cyclist or team.

We want to know what the winning time is going to be given an elite performance on each stage. Is there a designated algorithm equation that you can just parachute in that you push through and out comes the answer? Well, there is, but I took a long time to write the code to do it. In other words, you're not telling us. It's your code, you're keeping it. There's nothing to hide. words you're not telling us. You're like, yeah, there is.

It's your code. You're keeping it. There's nothing to hide. We use the laws of physics. Newton's laws of physics are pretty good for modeling cycling. Right, right. Well, you know, one of the most important aspects of cycling of course is aerodynamics and Neil deGrasse Tyson, as we said earlier, sat down with Lance

Armstrong, not Neil Armstrong. That's a whole other interview that happens on another show called Star Talk. Yes, where Neil Armstrong and Neil's a whole other interview that happened on another show called Star Talk. Yes, where Neil Armstrong and Neil deGrasse Tyson. But Lance Armstrong and Neil sat down to talk about aerodynamics. Let's hear what they had to say. From when you began riding to when you retired,

did the aerodynamics of the sport change? Well, yes. I mean, the aerodynamics absolutely changed. It's still your body. It's still your body. It's still your body. But the biggest thing that changed was in the late 80s, they invented a whole new type of handlebar, which changed in the late 80s or in the mid-80s.

You would have been sitting out like this. They took, which originated in the triathlon, they took the idea of that and they said, well, what if we, and the guy who invented this is a guy named Boone Lennon and he was an old ski racer but he also wrote bikes and he worked for Scott the ski manufacturer to make poles and skis and and he said well what if instead of and I wouldn't ski down the hill like this what if you know a skier who's tucked like this, like what if we rode like that? So that just took everything.

That takes away the aerodynamic drag of my arms outside. Everything inside. Everything inside your body. And now I'm one thing. Yeah. So you look, it was called the Scott Bar and it looked like a downhill ski racer. Out. Posing like that. Yeah, you were out a bit. Yeah, I've seen it. So that revolutionized

the aerodynamics of triathlon initially and then it moved into cycling which was a harder transition because they were so traditional. They saw these bars and these guys and they said no way. Ain't no way I'm riding that. Well, it proved so much faster that actually Greg LeMond

was the first one. He won the Tour de France in 1989 on these new aero bars. That's what it takes. I mean that was the tipping point for that bar. So then when did the cone head helmets come out? Those were around for a long time. Yeah those were around before the bars. Okay. And then came and then you know people try to make an aerodynamic frame. I mean I remember in the... Yeah the tubes became these you know. They're very, they're oval shaped. Yeah, yeah. You can even go back... Almost like the airfoil of a plane. A British guy, when the UCI, when the governing body

was a little more lax on the double triangle thing, a British guy in 1996 by the name of Chris Boardman set the hour record, which is on the track. I love the hour record. Which is like the ultimate test. I love that. I mean, you're indoors. There's no wind. There's no draft. It's like the ultimate. And the track is banked.

It's banked at 30 degrees. There's nothing against you. Right. So he broke the hour record on a bike. It's called the Lotus bike. It was not a double triangle. You can look it up. I mean, we can go to the lab.

It was a very this is to me if the sport said okay you guys evolve in technology ways do whatever you want that's what the sport would look like you'd have that that that's what a bike frame would look like but the lotus frame the lotus frame which you you your audience will see it we'll get a picture of it so but then they backed off that and went back to the double triangle. But you'll see how radical it looks. And obviously he went. I mean, nobody's ever come before. What's your best hour?

I've never done that. You've never done that? No. Tell me that. You're lying. I've had a lot of great hours in my life, but they weren't on a bell draw. Oh, look at that. And like the track inside, does he?

Loves the road. Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting, Eric, that they borrowed from other sports. You listen to that first bit, the Scott Barr comes out of skiing. Lotus is a British car manufacturer. They had a Formula One race team. So cycling's been borrowing from all these different sports in an attempt to get that speed.

Get faster. And why not? We all follow the same laws of physics. Right. So a skier is facing the same kind of error that a cyclist is going to face. Yes. So we can learn a lot from other sports by seeing what technologies have advanced in other sports and apply them to cycling. in other sports and apply them to cycling.

So, I was going to say, what is the optimum way to increase airflow for a biker, aside from the tuck, which makes perfect sense. You ever see a downhill skier, they're actually, not only are they tucked, but they're as low to the ground as possible. So, what is the optimum means of increasing airflow for a bike cyclist? Well, we learn about air resistance when we're children and we stick our hands out the car window. We get into airplane mode and the hand is sideways and we have very little drag. And then we turn it 90 degrees and all of a sudden we're getting smacked by the air and the hand will fall back. So we know that... Which, by the way, Eric, is why I only have one hand.

But thanks for bringing up my pain, sir. Thank you. No, go ahead. I'm joking. If you drive on the other side of the road in England, then you can lose the other hand. All right, Eric, don't encourage him. Please just don't encourage him. Now, am I right when, and Chuck loves this term, skin friction,

is that the technical, the cyclist term for the problem that you face as a competitor? What you're trying to do is reduce the area. So when you get into that tucked position, you are reducing the amount of area that the air can hit. So if you're going really slow, the air resistance might just be a couple of pounds on you. If you're going really fast downhill, it could be 15, 16 pounds. And remember, 15 pounds is the weight of the bike. So you've got the weight of a bowling ball being pulled back behind you, air resistance. So you can really feel it. It's really slowing you down.

So as Neil said, if we get the conehead helmets, then I get the super slippery Lycra bodysuit. I get really smart booties for my shoes. Nice. Reduce all of the wind resistance. How much can I gain? In the time trials, they're allowed to wear this very sleek clothing and aerodynamic equipment.

They've got the back wheel is covered. And you can reduce drag by about 20%. You've got the teardrop helmet. You get a cyclist like, I think, of Tony Martin from Germany on the bike who just absolutely almost gets himself completely two-dimensional on that thing, the way he can compress his knees and his body. It's an amazing thing to see. But they can reduce by 20% or so the drag area that they feel.

Okay, one question, Eric. Why only the rear wheel is covered and the front wheel has the spokes or whichever system is preferred. So when the air is coming around the object, think of the water going around a boat, you have a wake in the back and that wake is taking away some energy that you have. So when you close off that back wheel and you have the teardrop shape, you're allowing the air to flow a little farther back and the wake's not quite as chaotic. You don't have quite as many swirls. You don't lose quite as much energy. Just to clarify, what you're saying is behind the bike, what happens is the air turbulence creates like a curl. And so that curl of turbulence happens much farther behind the bike itself,

freeing the bike to move faster, right? Yeah. If you just have a round object and you got air flowing behind it, you can get all these swirls behind it in the air. And that's taking energy away from the ball, let's say. But if you can teardrop the object, the air will flow much smoother behind it and you don't have quite as many swirls, so there's less drag on the object, the air will flow much smoother behind it, and you don't have quite as many swirls, so there's less drag on the object. Wow. And now, what are the speeds? Have we got to a place where we're kind of reaching an optimum speed?

What are the kind of speeds that we're talking about when we look at these aerodynamic advancements? Well, you go back a couple of years, in the first stage, you had Rohan Dennis setting a time trial record. Now, this was only about eight and a half miles. But the guy averaged. Yeah, only. I say only, yes. The guy averaged about 35 miles an hour on the bike.

Wow. I mean, that was an incredible speed. We're talking over 55 kilometers an hour. Sustain that for. Ticket. Yeah, that's insane. Wow. Yes. Super cool. Well, listen, let us jump into the next component, which I'm sure is key when it

comes to physics. And Lance Armstrong and Neil chatted about drafting, which I would assume is pretty much the whole daggone sport. But let's hear what they had to say. So let's talk about drafting. Okay. So... It's one of the most important whole daggone sport. But let's hear what they had to say. So let's talk about drafting. Okay. It's one of the most important parts of the sport. So presumably there's some speed below which drafting is not useful. Right.

That would be like one mile an hour. No. Anything more than... Anything more than stationary. Keep in mind, the speed is important to talk about, but the wind is. If you say 10 miles an hour, that's not very fast. But if the wind is 50 miles an hour in your face, 10 miles an hour is pretty fast.

So your draft, it goes up exponentially. The more intense the wind is, the direction of the wind, right? Obviously, if it's right in front of you, you stay right behind the rider that's in front of you. If the wind is from the left, then you inch over to the right. Oh, okay. So you just find, it's very, this is why I say NASCAR, you find that sweet spot of where that draft is, right?

And that's, and then of course, that just gets multiplied. If there's one rider in front of you, you have a draft. If there are a hundred riders in front of you, you have a draft. If there are 100 riders in front of you, you're not even pedaling. You're just getting sucked along in the partial vacuum behind the moving mass. Right. But all of this meets, Neil, all of this meets, think about this, right? If there's one guy in front of you, your draft is not as good as guy number 100. But your chances of crashing if you're 100 deep versus number two are much greater. So you've got to figure out how this all plays. How much do I want to sit

in this group and get sucked along, as you said, versus risk a crash? So you have to think about all of these things. And that's what goes into that positioning in the group. One of the most important things. You know what? Love him or loathe him, when Lance Armstrong speaks, we listen. He just talks so sensibly and so intelligently about that. So, Professor Eric Goff, is there an equation? Can you calculate the sweet spot for drafting in a cycle race like the Tour de France? Well, you can.

It's very hard to predict because you don't know where the wind's going to be. And it's changing. And as the roads turn, obviously their orientation with the wind is going to change. So as Lance said, you're going to slightly move left or slightly move right, depending on how the road and the wind change. But the idea is you're trying to get less air hitting you. So when you tuck in behind somebody else or a couple of other riders, you're going to reduce the amount of air hitting you.

How much of a team strategy applies here in drafting? Because this diagonal movement down a road of a whole bunch of cyclists, if you're out there on the front and there's no one there to work with you you're sucking in the insects and you're taking all the air pressure is is there a designated windbreaker so you you are going to have somebody who's going to do the lead i mean you're you're going to see like a chris froom sitting in the back enjoying the drafting a little more than some of his teammates i mean you're going to get the the main cyclist you know the lance armstrongs his teammates. I mean, you're going to get the main cyclist, you know, the Lance Armstrongs,

you know, those powerful cyclists are going to be the ones getting help from the teammates, and they'll cycle in and out. If you watch a team time trial, they will change who's at the front in and out throughout the stage. Interesting. How many punch-ups are there? How many? How many punch-ups are there during punch-ups, fisticuffs, fights, breakout during a section of the race where there's drafting?

Because there must be the real clamor to get that part of, it's called an echelon, am I right, when it breaks away in that sort of format? Yeah, I mean, the peloton itself, I mean, all the cyclists who are in the middle are enjoying the drafting and then the back. And then, of course, to be fair, I mean, the peloton itself, I mean, all the cyclists who were in the middle are enjoying the drafting and then the back. And then, of course, to be fair, I mean, they're going to be wanting to cycle in and out through the front to take their turn, you know, pulling. You know, it's not a free lunch, you know, unless you're just sitting in the back the whole time. Of course, your chances of crashing are higher if you're sitting in the back. Right. Well, Neil and Lance had some further thoughts on drafting, so let's check out what they have to say in this next clip.

I don't ride bikes or draft off of people, so I know what drafting is intellectually because I can calculate it. But I once tested this. So I don't recommend people do this because it was a little bit dangerous. This is going to be good. I don't recommend people do this because it was a little bit dangerous. This is going to be good. So when I first got the kind of car that tells you what kind of gas mileage you're getting,

right now it's standard, but this is a big deal. This is data that I can now see what the car is doing. And so if you're really flooring it, your gas mileage drops. You're getting two miles a gallon now because you're really spewing out the gas. And if you're coasting down a hill, your gas mileage goes to infinite because you're moving and you're not pressing the pedal, essentially. But on level ground, you get the accurate measurement of your miles per gallon. So I decided to pull up behind a truck. And I got closer and closer to the truck.

Now I'm kind of an unsafe closeness to it. And while I was there, I just watched the gas mileage go up. I was getting 20 miles a gallon, 30 miles a gallon, 50 miles a gallon, 60 miles a gallon. And there I was on level ground. And I said, wow, I felt like I was just floating. Yep in the cars a fascinating bit of metrics there Yeah, but think about the times that somebody's been on a road trip, right? Then this exact and and you know They've they've passed the exit for the gas station and the light comes on and all of a sudden they're not finding a gas station The smartest thing they can do and they're they're trying to figure out where is the next gas station?

They can't turn around because they're you know, they don't know if it's 10 miles or 50 miles. The smartest thing they can do is do exactly what you just said. Just get as close as you can to an 18-wheeler and just get sucked along until you get to the gas station. I mean, I've done that many times. Yeah, I thought I, like, discovered a new thing. Well, I wasn't trying to figure out the actual effect of drafting. I'm just trying to get to the gas station. Yeah, so drafting is so, so blase to you.

Now you just use it just for other things, right? Not to win a race. Well, you can draft in running. The Olympic marathon? They're running so fast. Think about that. They're running. Look, somebody's going to run a two-hour marathon.

Yeah. That's 13 miles an hour. Yeah. Yeah, it's almost a four-minute mile. That is fast. So at 13 miles an hour, I don't care if you're crawling, running, riding, you're drafting. So you see those guys. They all, there's that pack effect.

And it's a pack. And they're not running abreast to one another. They're not even running in a line. They're running in like a teardrop shape. That's right. Just like a bike race. So we to one another. They're not even running in a line. They're running in like a teardrop shape. That's right. Just like a bike race. So we learned one thing. Yes.

If we go on a road trip, Neil is not allowed to drive. Yes. That doesn't sound like the best road safety I've ever heard. Yeah, without a doubt. And we've also learned that neither Neil deGrasse Tyson nor Lance Armstrong are good at gauging the mileage of a car. So yeah. Yeah. It's like.

So what other applications of drafting do you see in other sports, Eric, or have you studied that? Well, certainly NASCAR. I mean, any kind of sport with cars racing, you're going to see them tucked very, very close in behind each other. And that's where you can get into some fights. If someone's drafting too much, they can trade a little paint in their exchange of words,

so to speak, to try to get someone. What sort of difference? Because we are talking a much shorter circuit than something like the Tour de France, even if you took just one of the stages from the Tour de France. You've got an elliptical and oval-shaped circuit in NASCAR. The speeds are higher, the distances are shorter. How do you begin to calibrate how, when, and using that sweet spot?

Well, when you're in an auto race, of course, you've got to time it right for when you're going to go to a pit stop and refuel. And if you can draft long enough and maybe get one extra lap in before you have to go to a pit stop and refuel. And if you can draft long enough and maybe get one extra lap in before you have to go to a pit stop, that could be the difference between winning and losing the race. On a long stage like the Tour de France, where you're going through mountains and maybe you're burning 7,000 or 8,000 calories

during that five hours in the saddle, every little tiny percentage you can pick up in a reduction in drag is going to make you all the stronger for the finish. Wow. Super cool. Well, you know, up next, we're going to actually explore the power and output and energy. So we'll have more of Neil and Lance and their interview on Playing With Science when we return. Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And this, of course, is Playing With Science.

Yes, it is indeed. And today we're discussing the physics of the Tour de France cycling races featuring Gildegras Tyson's interview with Lance Armstrong and one of our best friends, Professor Eric Goff, author of Gold Medal Physics, the Science of Sport and physics professor at Lynchburg College. Eric, good to have you on board. Now, you've got this modelling for the Tour de France. OK, we get into the point where power to weight ratio. And I just think if you want power, just one of the nfl linebackers only six foot five 250 pounds all the power you need but it doesn't quite work like that does it no it doesn't

when you're on a bicycle you're not only having to transport the bicycle you have to transport yourself so the heavier cyclists do really well on the the time trials that are flat and the flat stages. They've got the big thigh muscles. They can really power the finish. But they're woefully inadequate when it comes to the climbing and the mountains and the Alps and Pyrenees. Because they have to haul that mass up the mountain. So the Nibblies and Froons of the world do a lot better. They're a lot smaller frames, lower mass cyclists, 65 kilograms or so. And they can get up much better than an 82-kilogram flat stage specialist. So it's kind of like a pull-up contest. If you're a guy, two guys who have relatively equal strength, but one guy's a lot lighter than the other, he's probably going to be able to do more pull-ups. That's right. If they're only doing one, the guy that's pretty strong is going to be

okay. But if they have to do, you know, 50, the one pulling a lot less mass is probably going to do a little better. So how do you get that little skinny guy and push him all through forward power that you're going to need for 21 days in the saddle riding around France? Well, they're certainly going to need to eat a lot. They're burning over 6,000 calories a stage for a lot of these stages. And they have to consume a lot of those calories and maintain that equilibrium. They don't want to lose too much weight when they're on the Tour de France. Well, when it comes to power and weight ratio, we have Neil deGrasseyson and lance armstrong talking about this very thing so let's check out a clip from their interview when you were competing at your peak how much were you thinking about your nutrition

so you would have had coaches telling you absolutely yeah not so much nutritionists but we had coaches the most important thing for us at that time was the power that we could produce, which interestingly enough, early in my career, we couldn't measure power. You measured heart rate or rate of perceived exertion or how do I feel? How hard am I going? That's how you measured things. And then the power meter came along, and you could actually measure watts at the crank. That changed everything. So then you knew how strong you were. You weren't guessing. You weren't timing yourself. You weren't racing somebody else. We have this in rowing. It's called the ergometer.

Yeah, so you knew exactly. Yeah, you know if you're slacking up. I mean, oh my gosh. And literally overnight, the entire peloton sport went from heart rate to watts. And so that changed everything. It changed the training, it changed the rate, it changed it all. And so, but we knew. You knew how much power you could produce, which is number one variable, and you knew how much you weighed in the morning. So you knew how much you weighed, right? So that's just, we call it power to morning. So you knew how much you weighed. We call it power to weight.

So going up a hill, you can produce 500 watts and you weigh 160 pounds. And it's Newton's laws of physics at that point. That's right. It is laws of physics, but you always go back to the fact that there's luck. There's tactics. There's luck. So you have to always think about that. But obviously, if you don't have that magic number on power to weight, then who cares

about the luck? So it matters if you drop a pound without losing the power. Yep, absolutely. Or you could lose a little power and lose more weight. Even more weight so that the power to weight ratio goes up. That's right. ratio goes up. You know in aerospace engineering our version of that is what does it cost to put a pound of anything into orbit? You know what that is? Take a guess. No idea.

$10,000 to put a pound of anything in orbit. So your payload, if you shave ounces off that payload that matters. And then you don't want chubby astronauts going to space because that this is the cost of the of that so you just factor all this in and and it's important that you're in good shape then you have materials that come with all all the carbon fiber type them and all of these things so it's not just your weight it's the weight of the bicycle too. It's a package deal. Package deal.

You're going up the hill attached to the bicycle. So yes, you could have some guy say, you know what, I'm going to have dessert all year long. But I'm going to somehow find two pounds off my bike. Trade? Chocolate cake? Yeah. But then the sport… I got a new carbon fiber bike. I can But then the sport. I got a new carbon fiber bike. I can eat chocolate cake today.

But then the sport regulated the weight of the bike. They said. It's like horse racing. They put lead in the pocket, depending on how light the jockey is. I didn't know that. Yeah. But the bike could never be lighter than 6.8 kilos, total. So you're looking at just you know, just around 14

pounds. Okay. That's still really light. That's very light. But you could make a 10-pound bike if you wanted. I wouldn't ride it, but you could theoretically do that. Yeah, I'm kind of heavy. I'd be scared. Yeah, no, I wouldn't either. I wouldn't do that. Yeah. But so everybody had a 6.8-kilo bike. So then the rider had to get skinnier and skinnier and lighter and lighter. 6.8 kilo bike. So then the rider had to get skinnier and skinnier and lighter and lighter. So Eric, do we break the news to Lance that there's no such thing as luck? Yeah. What does he mean? What is he talking about, by the way? I don't get what he means when he's like, so he was talking about power to weight ratio, right? And you know as a scientist what that is, okay? Where does luck come involved since you're a you you know as a scientist what that is okay where does luck come involved

since you're a person who follows cycling what what exactly could he be talking about do you know certainly if you're cycling and all of a sudden your tire blows out you would say bad luck i got you now i get it now if you're behind somebody who you know clips the cyclist in front of that person and you get involved in an accident, then, yeah, I mean, there are a lot of things. So what he's talking about is misfortune as evidenced by unforeseen things, OK, like what you just said. Sportsman, superstition, hence default process, bad luck. Bad luck, right. In the mind of an athlete, it would go to bad luck.

Professor disagrees because there's no such thing. But in a sportsman's mind, that's. Bad luck, right. In the mind of an athlete, it would go to bad luck. Professor disagrees because there's no such thing. But in a sportsman's mind, that's where they'll go to. Okay. Well, if you have some crazy fan on the side of the road who's streaking across, you know, yeah, that's bad luck too. The devil with the pitchfork. Remember him that follows the tour?

Who's the devil with the pitchfork? There's a guy that comes out in a red devil suit. He's got a three-pronged fork. Right. And am I right, Eric? If you don't cycle as quickly as he likes, he comes with that fork. And there are superheroes and there are people who are streaking. Oh, it's like Times Square.

It's crazy, yes. It's like the dudes begging for money in Times Square. By the way, why do they allow somebody in a devil costume with a pitchfork on the sidelines of a race? You know what he's going to do. That can't be a good sign. It just makes you go faster. That is motivation. It's an incentive in itself. I've got to say that's motivation.

So when Lance is discussing about, hey, I can have – and where was Neil's mind? Straight to chocolate cake. I don't blame him. Okay, fine. I'm with him on that. Let me put the chocolate cake into a little bit of context here. So, you know, I was saying before that you could get 6,000 or 7,000, 8,000 calories burned on a really long uphill mountain-type stage. So think about this.

On a 21-stage race, a cyclist might burn over 100,000 to 110,000 calories. Oh, my goodness. Calories is a nice energy unit. A tic-tac's about a calorie. But let me make it a little bit easier. A Big Mac is 550 calories. So that average is 10 Big Macs per stage. So if you want to know what a Tour de France cyclist burns on average per stage, think 10 Big Macs. Wow. That's pretty amazing. Even without fries. Without fries.

That's not the whole meal. That's not what they're using to fuel themselves, but that gives you a picture of how much they're actually burning per stage. Do you actually sit there when you're modeling the stages and the times, the structures within the power to weight ratios of each team with individual riders? What we do is we take what the elite could do on a given stage. So we're not actually looking at a specific cyclist. We're looking at what the research is telling us that the elite can do on a flat stage, mountain stage, on a time trial.

And we're trying to predict the winning time. And I actually put these predictions one day in advance on my blog. And we just stick our necks out and see how close we get each day. That's cool, man. How much further can science take the power-to-weight ratio? What is it with the asymmetric chain rings, the sort of elliptical shape where you're trying to decrease the number of dead spots in the pedaling of a rider to increase the power output. Does that come into play? Sure.

I mean, and you also have these really big chain, you know, these ratios where you get, you know, someone like Tony Martin using a big chain where you get a big wheel on the front and a little one in the back to really generate the speed. I mean, he uses a chain ratio. I think if I tried to, I don't know if I could get down the street on a bike like that. I mean, it's got such a huge ratio, but it's very efficient for him. He's not wasting pedal motion on, as you said, this dead swing in the pedaling. motion on, as you said, this dead swing in the pedaling. Are we going to see the governing bodies allow lighter weight frames with equal strength entering into the mainstream and elite racing? And is there any detriment to having a bike? Let's say you had a bike that could be three pounds or six pounds. Is there any drawback to having a bike

that light? There is. And think about the football tackling, the American football tackling. So if you try to avoid being tackled, you stay low to the ground. You want your center mass to be low. Well, if your bicycle is really light, that's moving the center mass up because you've got your body on top of it. Right. And that's going to make it less stable. Your chances of tipping over are going to go up. So they may allow it to go down a little bit, but if they start noticing more crashes coming in, then they're obviously going to have to bring it back up again. then they're obviously going to have to bring it back up again.

So when you talk about this power-to-weight ratio and the fuel that these guys need, how is it that they're able to get – are they fueling on the go? Because here's what I'm thinking. If you need 6,000 calories to get through a stage, all right, like you're killing yourself literally. You can drive through, aren't you? Yeah, I'm thinking like let's stop at a Burger King. Do they have that on the course? Like, can we just drive through? But no, you're definitely, you're like, literally you're killing yourself with this kind of exertion.

How do you get calories back in you before you get to the end of this thing? Well, when you watch the Tour de France, you see that they go through these feed stations, Well, when you watch the Tour de France, you see that they go through these feed stations and they'll get bags with these various, you know, energy bars, protein bars, various drinks that they have that supply them very high calorie bars in some cases. And you'll see them eating while they're cycling. They're taking their food with them. They're getting the bags with the food in it. And they're eating all throughout the race. I mean, sometimes they'll tuck a bar into their jersey and then eat it, you know, in an hour's time or something.

So they're trying to pace when they're eating as well. OK, nice. Has there been anything the governing body has done to give the teams and the cyclists themselves an opportunity to improve things within this particular spectrum? Well, certainly when the teams employ more science, then they have to go to the governing body and say, you know, we've developed a new helmet or we've developed a new shoe. Or, you know, if you watch the time trials,

you don't even see a traditional set of handlebars. So every time something's improved, they have to go to the governing body and say, you know, what do you think about this? And if it makes the cycling faster and more entertaining to watch, the cycling body is likely to say, sure, go for it. So but you just can't come up with something on your own and say like, you know, hey, this is what we're going to do. You know, like I just I had the newest shoe. I'm going to wear it myself. Like it looks like the Pope's shoe. It's red. It's very fashionable.

And I'm just I'm throwing that on. Like, you can't do that on your own. No. Well, that shoe's going to work great on a Popemobile, but probably not a bicycle. Okay. From Popemobiles to the break. We're going to take one. Up next, we'll hear more fascinating science, and we will get into strategy and the unpredictability.

Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly. I'm Chuck Nice. And this is Playing With Science. Yes, it has. And we'll be discussing the physics of the Tour de France featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson's interview with the one and only Lance Armstrong. And still with us via video call is Professor Eric Goss,

author of Gold Medal Physics, The Science of Sport. So there's one element of the sport you can't really predict with science. Yes. Can you? We'll see. That is team strategy. So, Eric, can you predict with science a team strategy or not? Is that part of your modeling, too? It's not a big part of the model because we don't have access to the teams and we don't have access to their strategy.

So where our model does better, it will be on mountain stages where the cyclists tend to get more isolated. Gotcha. So the strategy is much more important on the flatter stages when they're in the peloton, when they're cycling in and out, there's a higher chance of a crash. Right. Once they get on their own, we're doing a little better with the model when we're talking about an individual cyclist kind of alone on the mountain. Well, speaking of strategy and unpredictability, let's check out this clip with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Lance Armstrong on this very topic. Forgive me for not thinking about bike racing as a team

sport because you and select others rise up and you're the marquee poster boy for whatever it is. Tell me how important team strategy is. Because I have no way to even think about it. Let me just give you a stat. If the Tour de France is 2,500 miles, let's just roughly say it. That's roughly what it is. I'm alone. That's like New York to L.A.

Right, it's a long way. But I'm alone, right? So people think about an individual winner of the event. But I'm actually alone for probably, of the 2,500 miles, 80 miles. So in the individual time trials and maybe in the off chance that you're alone in a breakaway or you win alone on the top of a mountain. So whatever percentage that is, you are just tucked in with your guys. And when I would say with your guys... When you say alone, you mean isolated so in with your guys. And when I would say with your guys. When you say alone, you mean isolated so the camera sees you and no one else.

Yeah, it's that heroic shot. You're all alone looking and winning the tour. And in the long shot, there's the pack is a half a mile back. But when I say tucked in with those guys, I do mean drafting. But I could say, I need a water bottle. I need my raincoat. I need some water bottle. I need my raincoat. I need some more food. I get a flat tire.

The car's not close. I'm taking your wheel. So it's just, they do, I mean, you really just kind of sit back there and. So the team is an organism. Yeah. Even not even. Keeping itself alive. I know which teammate's bike fits me the best. organism. Yeah. Even not even a… Keeping itself alive. I could take…

If I know which teammate… I know which teammate's bike fits me the best. So if the bike breaks and there's cars not close, I take his bike. He's standing on the side of the road alone. I didn't know this. Yeah. Oh. Now that's because you're the man.

That's because you're the team leader. But every team has a team leader. So if Arnold Schmednick, that happened to him, you're not giving your bike to him. He just has to wait. He just waits there. I didn't know that. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Okay, let me just say, that sucks, okay? That is awful. There is no way. That is not a team sport, by the way, Eric. I know this is like your favorite sport, man. I know you're totally into this, but that is not a team sport where one guy gets to be a prima donna and everybody has to do his bidding. I need a water bottle.

Why don't you get your own water bottle? You know, that's what I'm saying. I don't get this. Why is it that this is set up so? Because some are better than others. And some are there to serve. Some are there to lead. You have a lead rider.

See, you're not cut out to be a team butler. No. This is a definite. You are absolutely right. If you're not alpha, you're not playing. Me being black either. Absolutely not. But there's nine members of the team.

Okay. Is that correct, Eric? Yeah, that sounds right. And if you're not team leader, like Lance, you're a domestique? Yeah, so you have a role to play. Oh, I love this. Oh, you guys are pissing me off right now. Go ahead.

Please continue. Continue. So each team obviously is going to have its leader. You're going to have a Chris Froome for one team, Team Sky or something. And you're going to have cyclists who are going to be helping him. And they're going to be in the peloton. If there's a cyclist that takes off who's going to try to get ahead of the peloton, maybe one of your teammates has to chase him down. And the thing is they're trying to set you up, if you're a mountain cyclist, for example, to get into that last big climb.

They want to get you down there. You want to be, you know, plenty of calories in you. You've got your water. You've gotten there safely. You got there in good time. And now you're the stud who's going to go up the mountain and get that big finish, the big climb. Okay. I mean, listen, don't get me wrong.

I understand everybody has a role to play on a team. But what I'm trying to figure out is how do you establish this hierarchy where, you know, I'm king of the team and everybody else has to do what, you know, for me. Imagine my stopwatch. Okay. My time, your time.

Whichever's fastest gets to be team leader. It's all about speed. Is that what it is? Is that how they determine? Yeah, I mean, you know, to pick up leader it's all about is that what it is is that how they determine yeah i mean you know to pick up on gary's point i mean let's start down at the bottom of out dues i mean you got this famous mountain in france with these 21 hairpin turns put a couple cyclists down there and say go to the top and then you're going to figure out who your team leader is in a hurry okay i got you got you. So basically I have established myself as the alpha. I'm better than everybody on the team.

Is that it? No, what we've done is allow you to have that because you won't stop moaning. So to stop you moaning, we've given you the team leader. How's that sound? See, well, you know, in my case, that's the way it would be. They'd be like, just let Chuck be the team leader. Let the guy be the team leader. Will you shut up if we let you be the team leader? That would be it.

So, I mean, Eric, what you discussed there is a very defensive team strategy in terms of you protect the team leader at all costs. You get the tire. You get the energy bar. You get the water. You get the raincoat. You get silver service. But it's a three-week race. I mean, you's a three-week race i mean you gotta keep in mind well you know they're right go ahead they have three weeks to do this and they have to survive in all kinds of conditions

um and keep in mind the you know the the cyclists who are typically winning are the ones who win in the mountains i mean the the cyclists who win this thing may only win one or two stages in any given race. You know, they're not winning every single stage. Their teammates are keeping them close on the flat stages. They're not losing any time against their main competitors, the alpha males and the other teams. So they're all getting close to the same time on these flat stages.

And then they get up to this massive mountain stage and then they try to take a couple minutes from a competitor. And so that's when they have to shine. So, you know what, I forget that this is a three-week. Now, actually, I'm going to take it back. It's actually really fascinating now. Absolutely. Because I forgot completely as we were having this conversation

that this race takes over three weeks to actually happen. Eric, am I right? They get two days rest. But they're not back to back. They get two rest days over the course. Two days rest over the course of three weeks. That's right. You get 23 days for this race.

21 of them are cycling and two of them are resting. And during the resting days, am I allowed a conjugal visit? No. You can, but your legs may not be there for the mountain. I'm not sure how I interpret that, but let's go geographically. Do the teams

Thanks for introducing that. Do the teams, apart from that defensive strategy of protect the king, have an aggressive strategy when it comes to taking out opponents? We talked about, touched upon it maybe during the drafting, there was some bumping and some nudging. But do the teams aggressively attack other teams' riders?

Sure. If one rider's ahead and you might want some teammates to try to string the peloton up a little bit and break away, and then another team's going to have to send someone to chase him down. And you can lose some teammates that way. And you can lose a little protection that way. So, yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of jockeying for position on the flat stages and then trying to set up a good climb on the bad stages.

So, Eric, let me get this straight. Would your job be at that point to chase the guy down and then to slow him down to try and get in front of him and maybe impede his progress is that part of the strategy well you might actually just get up behind him and start drafting i mean he's gonna have to do a little extra work to hold you behind him right okay i got you wow so now with that in mind yeah okay here's what i'm thinking so it's since it is so dependent upon all of these different variables

coming together, what is to stop me from having a bunch of fans on the side of the road who are a part of my team who are going to do some stuff. Alright guys, once we get by, you know those guys behind us? Make sure you get out the slingshots. Let's get out the eggs.

What's to stop that from happening? You see the police cars? You see the police cars riding with the cyclists? Those people are going to be going to jail pretty quick. Jean Dons have the firearms. But it doesn't stop it, does it, Eric? Wasn't it Sir Bradley

Wiggins who had a bottle of urine thrown over him in recent years? Yeah, I mean, that's one of the pee tapes we're allowed to see these days, I guess. Awesome. OK, by the way, all I'm gonna tell you is this. Yo, that is my kind of cheating. OK, if you're going to cheat, I'm just saying having somebody throw a bottle of urine on your opponent, that's some gangster R. Kelly stuff right there. And I'm all for it. OK, I'm just saying. All right. I'm all right i'm joking guys all right okay let's let's go back to the strategy because quite often when you watch the tour de france yes you see the peloton

but someone said i've had enough and they've gone and they've opened up 500 yards a mile and they're off and going i mean what kind of strategy is that if it's all about team success well don't forget if you win a stage of the tour de france you get up on the podium at I mean, what kind of strategy is that if it's all about team success? Well, don't forget, if you win a stage of the Tour de France, you get up on the podium at the end. You get a nice check. You get prestige for your team, which also has a sponsor. I mean, there's a financial benefit, of course. You help your own image as a cyclist, which could lead to endorsement deals.

I mean, there's a lot of things that, I mean, not everybody can win a Tour de France stage. So, you know, to be able to do so is a pretty fantastic and special thing. So there is an eye in team. Yeah, without a doubt. So is it for the three weeks, is it overall time? Is that how you determine the winner? The overall time for the team, overall time for individual riders? How exactly do they come up and say, you are now the winner of the Tour de France? And within that, how do they say, OK, we're going to put the laurel leaf on this one dude?

So after each stage, we know who's got the lowest time. And that general classification is known after every single stage. So the yellow jersey is going to the cyclist who's completed the stages in the shortest amount of time, and that's the one who wins it. Okay, so my point is this. If I am the team leader, okay, and we are winning all these stages, but I have only won two of the stages, but I'm the team leader. Do I win the Tour de France? You sure do. And in fact, the one or two stages you probably are going to win are going to be

in the mountains and your teammates may be like 25 minutes behind you. They might get you to the bottom of the hill, but you're going to pick up a lot of time on them getting up that hill. I got you. I got you. Then you have individual time trials during stages where the individual sprinters on the team come to the fore? That's right. Sometimes you have a team time trial, sometimes an individual time trial. Those are fun to watch

because you get some really fast speeds on those things. What sort of speed are we up to on a time trial? Yeah. Well, I mentioned before that Rohan Dennis had set the record about 35.5 miles an hour over a road. Yes, but give us an average. Give us an average. If you were to take the average speed, what would it be?

That is his average speed. Holy crap. Well, I mean, look last year at Chris Froome. I mean, he averaged nearly 25 miles an hour for the entire race. Wow. All three weeks. All three weeks. That's hour for the entire race. Wow. All three weeks. All three weeks. That's insane.

That's right. Wow. Let me ask you this because I'm going to say, first of all, guys, let me just say I have a new respect for the Tour de France. Good. I will say that. I'm not going to hate. These guys are incredible athletes, and this is an amazing physical feat that they are accomplishing. That being said, I know for a fact that I am never going to watch the Tour de France.

So what I'm trying to ask you is, have you ever watched the entire Tour de France, Eric? Yes, I have. It's nice to sit in my office and prop my feet up and watch it and tell people I'm working. Secrets out. That's right. I mean, you know, keep in mind, you know, when I was a kid, I wanted to play baseball and I could probably go into a batting cage and hit one out of 100 pitches for a nice single. But not on my best day could I wake up and go do a stage of the Tour de France. I mean, this is an incredibly elite sport. Very few people can do something like that.

Now, with that in mind, and we're not going to get into doping at all, but with that in mind, is there any wonder that these guys are doing performance enhancing drugs after all the stuff that we just talked about. I'm sorry, but I don't mind if they take steroids or anything that makes them stay awake. Or I don't care if they're smoking crack. These guys, it's insane what they're doing. Why do we care that they're doing drugs? Why?

Well, I guess if you have rules in place and rules are being broken, then you care. I mean, you just have to decide if you really don't care that they're doing the drugs, then just make them legal. I mean, you just have to decide what you want the rules of your sport to be. I mean, you know, they're not going to make the bikes lower in mass than 6.8 kilograms. If you want to change it, change it. You know, the drugs can have harmful effects to the people. So there's kind of an ethical reason why you might want the rules in place to ban those substances. OK. All right. Listen, I mean, those are all good and salient points that you just made. But I'm just saying that I understand.

That's all I can say is I understand why somebody might quote unquote cheat during the Tour de France after this conversation we have had. And if I'm 25 years old in a locker room and my only way to make a living is on a bicycle and I need a little edge to compete with the other people that I see also getting a little edge, it's hard for me to fault their temptations. Right. Right on. But we love the sport anyway. Yes. We hope and pray that it is clean.

Is that right, Eric? Well, I at least hope it's being followed. The rules are being followed. I would like to think that's true. Without a doubt. Well, this has been fascinating, man. Yeah, it has. I got to tell you.

Eric, thank you so much for your time. Professor Eric Goff from Lynchburg College, professor of physics and author of Gold Medal Physics. And thank you to Neil. Yeah. And to Grass Tyson and his time with Lance Armstrong. I think, as I said before, love him or loathe him. When Lance Armstrong talks, well, you know what?

We listened because there's an awful lot of sense in what he says in terms of the science and the way he explains it. The guy knows the sport. That's all there is to it. Sure, yeah. I'm glad he took the time to talk to us. Man, this has been great, Gary. Yeah.

So we've learned one thing after another, and the most important thing is that if Chuck doesn't get his way, he will have a tantrum. So you are Libra. I'm Gary O'Reilly. I'm Chuck Nice. And this has been Playing With Science. We look forward to your company soon. Take care.