StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Motorcycle Racing: Physics on 2-Wheels

Episode Date: June 1, 2018

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… We kick it into top gear as hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice explore the physics of motorcycle racing, riding, and assembly alongside adventure journalist Jim Clash and physics professor and motorcycle aficionado Charles Falco.NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/motorcycle-racing-physics-on-2-wheels/Photo Credit: SCrider (Flickr) via Wikimedia Commons. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly. I'm Chuck Nice. And this is Playing With Science. And this time we take to the track on two wheels. Yes. Yes. And as always, our need for speed will be equally matched by our need to know. Yeah.

Yeah. And our need to know is still our need to know. Yeah, yeah. And our need to know is still our need for speed. And did you ever wonder how and why a motorcycle racer goes through a bend almost horizontal? Well, the man with the answers is University of Arizona's Professor of Optical Sciences and Physics as a well-known, passionate motorcycle collector and rider himself. We're talking about Professor Charles Falco. He'll be joining us.

Very interesting man, indeed. I'm back for another spin around the Playing With Science track, and joining us first in the studio is our very good friend and doer of daring deeds. Yes, the adventure journalist, Jim Clash. Jim, welcome back. Jesus, thanks, guys. I feel like I'm becoming a regular here.

Yeah, man, we love having you here. Don't worry, you get charged rent before you leave. I'm sure. All the stuff that we only think about doing. Oh, yeah. It's a boy's own story. I mean, I am very, very envious. Now, because this is two wheels and you're more in tune with four, but you have been

on a motorbike at 140 miles per hour. Which is crazy. Says him. Who's been a lot faster on a motorbike. Not that much faster, but I've done pretty fast. So this was the Superbike Pro racer, Chris Ulrich, and he went to Sturgis Motorcycle Rally last summer in Dakota. So are you kind of finding your way towards the two-wheel sector of motorsport?

Or are you just, what's this about? You know, when I was a kid, my mom always said, you can't drive a motorcycle, you'll lose a limb. And I was in the very formative years, so I never got on with motorcycles. I'm afraid of them. However, I couldn't pass up the chance when Chris Ulrich offered me a chance to get on the back of his motorcycle at 140 miles an hour. He also took me through a road course where we were literally, you know, almost where your knees are dragging and that sort of thing. Was that the first time you'd ever done that? That's the first time I've ever been on a motorcycle. Really?

How did that work between your ears, that space between your ears when you're thinking, oh, my word, I'm about to kiss the black stuff here. This is asphalt. This is tarmac. This is not good. Again, I had faith in Chris. I watched him do it with someone else before I did it. And I thought, this is my story.

I put myself into that role of the journalist, and I have to write about this. So rather than being fearful, I was thinking, OK, what is my story. I put myself into that role of the journalist and I have to write about this. So rather than being fearful, I was thinking, OK, what is this sensation like? How am I going to write about it? And, you know, the fear kind of went away. So do you start this when you're writing with just, oh, start with it? How do you, from a journalistic point of view, I'm'm interested now approach that looking back at your experience well again um in a lot of my experiences i have to be the active participant i have to drive the car or ski to the south pole or whatever it is uh in this experience i was just

riding on the back of a motorcycle um so by the way is also active in itself because well yeah you have to move right you have yeah you can't just be on the back of a motorcycle. Because if you don't engage with the process, you are fighting against the ethics of everything. Exactly. So even your passenger, by the way, can make a ride, you know, very dangerous. Sure. If you have the wrong passenger on the back of your bike, they are putting your life in jeopardy, you know. Yeah, they talked to me a little bit before I got

on. But yeah, I mean, I was a passenger. Now, I did go to Sturgis, which is where they have the big motorcycle rally every year in South Dakota. A lot of hogs in Sturgis. It was amazing the number of different people there. There was a lady who was in her 90s who still rode her motorcycle to Sturgis from New Jersey. What's his name from the Doobie Brothers was there. He's a motorcycle guy. Pat Morris or Pat somebody. Tom Berenger was there from Platoon. He's a motorcycle guy. I mean, it was fascinating. They all wanted me to get a tattoo. They wanted to get the New York guy drunk and get a tattoo but i i didn't do it yeah i'm good for you okay you've heard of the isle of man tt motorcycle yeah yeah it's over a period of a week um yeah i think if you just heard chuck say it's amazing if you

imagine there's a whole load of public roads and therefore there's a sort of quintessential village hill slightly mountainous area on the isle of Man, which is between Ireland and the west coast of England. It's a peculiar little place, yet they open it up. said it is 38 miles of terror, this one course, and that it is a test of nerve and speed and possibly the most dangerous sporting event in the world. Wow. I got to tell you, I've never been to the Isle of Man, but I've watched it on television.

NBC used to, it always comes on on a Saturday afternoon, and I love it. What gets me about the whole race in the professional side is that the spectators are standing right on the course, which is dangerous in and of itself. It's like the Tour de France where you see them lying down the street. Exactly. in and of itself. It's like the Tour de France where you see them lying down the street. Exactly.

you're going to be hit by a bicycle rather than a 1,000cc super bike. And I'm sure they have accidents with the spectators.

Oh, for sure. Yes, they do. What I'm sensing here is a man who has made a reputation as an adventurer, an adventure journalist, took one look

at the Isle of Man TT and went, no thank you. A man who swam in the Arctic. At the North Pole. At the North Pole. Yeah. The man who's been at 250 miles, three miles an hour driving the car himself,

looked at the TT and went, nope. Yeah. I mean, do you just, so it's so funny that you, who've done all these like incredibly, I will say, adrenaline-inducing activities, someone like you has never had a desire to drive and ride motorcycles. I haven't. I knew it was the cool thing to do back in high school and college. to do back in high school and college. But again, my mother at that early age telling me I'd lose a limb if I got on a motorcycle stayed with me. And again, I'm becoming a little more open to it now, not to this TT thing.

That's nuts. But yeah, I was asking somebody the other day at the Explorers Club about how to get a license and what to do and what bikes are in and what bikes are out. He's got a Harley. And so I won't say no forever, but I'll say no to that TT. Well, I'll say no to the TT. I mean, listen, I can't wait to get – I was saying before the show, I'm definitely getting a bike again.

Like once you do it, once you bike, for the rest of your life, you just – You've got to scratch that itch. Anytime I see somebody on a motorcycle, I think, God, what have I done? We're going to take our break. We have got a unique character. Professor Charles Falco is not just a physicist. He is a motorcycle aficionado, a man passionate, and a man responsible for being one of the curators of the art and science of motorcycles,

which was one of Guggenheim's most popular ever exhibits. Stick around. We'll be back shortly. Sweet. Welcome back to Playing With Science. Today, we're exploring motorcycle racing. And with us in the studio, we still have adventure journalist and our very good friend, Jim Clash. But joining us now to break down the physics is Professor Charles Falco. Welcome to Playing With Science, Professor.

Well, thank you for having me. Let's just give you a proper introduction here. You are the Chair of Condensed Matter Physics, Professor of Optical Sciences and Professor of Physics at the University of Arizona. Expert on the magnetic and optical properties of thin film materials. But the reason why you're really here, sir, is you are a motorcycle aficionado, a man that owns probably more than 15 bikes, and at one point was part of the curating team for the Guggenheim Museum's exhibition of art and science of motorcycles.

Have I left anything out? No, you've got everything. the Guggenheim Museum's Exhibition of Art and Science of Motorcycles. Have I left anything out? No, you've got everything. I'm pleased because that is a serious role of honour. So we are thrilled that you're on board. Where did it start for you? Yes. Where did your love of motorcycles come from?

When I was eight years old, somebody gave a ride across Des Moines, Iowa on the back of a Triumph Thunderbird motorcycle. The reason why I know that is that Triumph Thunderbird was actually the motorcycle that Marlon Brando had in the Wild One. But a modified,

greatly modified version won the world land speed record at Bonneville. And for two years, they had on the gas tank world's fastest motorcycle. And I was young enough that I thought I was on the world's fastest motorcycle. And I was hooked for life at that point. At eight years of age, you would. That's good. So maybe you know this because you're a historian as well.

So maybe you know this because you're a historian as well. So you said that that modified version became the world's fastest motorcycle at Bonneville. Triumph also has a motorcycle called Bonneville. Is that because of that time trial success? Exactly. Oh, cool. It won the, set the world land speed record in 1956 i believe and so over the next two years before they introduced the model the bonneville the triumph thunderbird had the decal on it that said world's fastest motorcycle that's so cool to hear you say that

i'm getting so excited right now you're gonna go and buy yourself no that's gonna be my next bike by the way it's a triumph bonneville i'm just letting everybody know right now. You're going to go and buy yourself? No, that's going to be my next bike, by the way, is a Triumph Bonneville. I'm just letting everybody know right now. That's, that's, you know, yes. Red tank with the, what's that? You could do far worse. Thank you, sir. As a Brit, I would endorse the buying of a Triumph, of course. We've sort of documented your, the genesis of your passion for motorcycles. Being a physicist, has it been a help or a hindrance being able to understand fully all of the science involved in getting the best out of your motorcycles? I would say not necessarily the physics of the motorcycle, but the mechanics of the motorcycle has been intrinsic to all my work, my scientific work, as an experimental scientist.

I think in terms of, I have instruments we've built that are at least in my brain, if no place else, based on what I know about motorcycle mechanics. Wow. So how interesting that if you approached the whole realm of your optical science through the lens of a, pun intended, a motorcycle. In fact, I mean, there's only three things that I'm interested in professionally, physics, motorcycles and art. And they all interrelate for me. Really? So now when you say art, because I can see physics and motorcycle, because the two are inexorably tied together. Everything from gyroscopes to laws of motion, you name it. A motorcycle is nothing more than a rolling physics class as far as I'm concerned.

But I'm interested to know where the art ties in. So if you look up the Hockney-Falco thesis, David Hockney, arguably the world's most famous living artist, he and I, about 15 years ago now, discovered that artists of the repute of Jan van Eyck or Bellini Caravaggio used lenses to project images 200 years before Galileo, before people even thought lenses could be used. And the reason why I was able to make those discoveries with David was I've been interested in art and photography since I was five years old or so. So those passions of my physics and optics came from my interest in motorcycles and photography. Wow. I have to tell you, that is a fascinating journey

in terms of coming to science through your personal passions. I'm always interested when you talk to science, how is it that they come to their love of their particular scientific discipline or their study? And, you know, every scientist has a story. And I have to tell you, yours may be the most interesting. I did flag up at the top of the show that we would find you very interesting um has the art of the motorcycle kind of evolved for you through engineering through shapes through the interest with motorcycles the interesting thing about them is um there's very little on a motorcycle there's

two wheels an engine a gas tank yeah that you would think that you don't have much choice as a designer, but you can have two motorcycles that you could orally describe would sound identical. One would be incredibly ugly and the other is a beautiful work of art. And so the fact that minor differences in how these components are laid out, minor differences in curves, make all the difference in the world with the beauty of the machine. Some of it's aerodynamic. Some of it is intrinsically dictated by the physics. But another way of looking at the art or the design of motorcycles, you can watch the design of motorcycles evolve throughout the 20th and 21st century by watching material science materials physics evolve so that every time some material is developed it's incorporated in motorcycles okay so let's go to the the back end of the 20th century and move it forward to where we are now

what has really changed the game in terms of material engineering? Carbon fiber entered about that time. And the ability to create complex shapes through computerized-aided TIG welding, tungsten inert gas welding. So you could take something that wasn't possible not many years before that. could take something that wasn't possible not many years before that. You could decide a wrought piece of aluminum was good for one function, cast aluminum for something else, welded box section of aluminum for something else, and you could combine them with tungsten or gas welding and create a structure where every aspect of it is optimum for its particular purpose. That wasn't possible before. Wow. And you know what's funny? I just thought carbon fiber was used so that they could make motorcycles really expensive. That too. That too. Go ahead. Go ahead. Part of materials

technology is the evolution of microprocessors and so true fly-by-wire computer controlled emission controls on motorcycles are possible because of developments in microprocessor technology okay let's let's bring jim clash in on this um the professor engaging with a classic Triumph bike from the 50s. No processes, no carbon fibers. And by the way, beautiful. Beauty's in the eye of the beholder. This is true, but not when we're talking about that particular bike. I'm not going to argue with you.

Okay, thank you. And you're looking at the development, the evolution of that. Then you get to the emotive side of it. Do you, as an adventure journalist, look at it and say, I would rather have the mechanical, tactile, human contact? Or would you rather have something that was more computer generated? Honestly, as a person who does this, not on motorcycles, but in race cars, I'd rather have the tactile connection with the bike. I don't want everything to be motorized or computerized. Honestly, I think they could take racing right now. They could put cars out there, computerized.

They could have the driver sit in the stands and drive them, but nobody would want to do that. They'd never want to see that. People want to see people driving cars. So again, you can take it to the extreme, but I that you must create for yourself with that car. They say that the butt, when you're in the car, that's what you feel when you're turning a corner or whatever. That's what your indicator is, and then your hands follow and your feet follow. So you've got to be one with the machine. I've got to think that with a motorcycle, there are similar things. And that's what I was going to say to Charles, professor, doctor, is that I think you would agree that I don't think there's any greater human integration with the machine than a person on a motorcycle.

So I agree with that completely. And the motorcycle has everything you need and nothing more. And a difference with a car, a place where you're integrated even more so than a car. I live in Arizona. And here, when you're in the desert in the summer, it can be 110 degrees. But at the top of a nearby mountain, it can be 70 degrees. If you're in a car, you get in the car, you turn on the air conditioning, and you get out of the car an hour later, and suddenly you're shocked by the temperature change. If you're on a motorcycle, you're not shocked at all because you feel every minor one degree change in temperature as you go through a shadow. You feel it. You feel the engine vibrate. You feel the road. The suspension is much more in tune with the road than a

typical car suspension, which is supposed to get rid of all the bumps. Motorcycles, you feel the bumps. So it's been said that you like objects or you hate objects depending upon how many senses they appeal to. Like, you could look at a car and go, that's a beautiful car, but, you know, so what? It's an electric car. You can't hear it. It doesn't vibrate. It appeals to your sense of sight. On a motorcycle, it's your sense of sight, the sense of sound, the vibration, the sense of smell. Every one of your senses is engaged. So either you, if you like them, you like them a lot. If you hate them, you you hate them a lot i'm not a motorcyclist

a lot of reasons why that never happened in my life um with a rider it seems that rider becomes an active part of the weight transference and therefore that must be correct me if i'm wrong the real feeling of enhanced connection to the bike a motorcycle weighs let's say 400 pounds and a rider with his leathers and helmet and like may weigh let's say 200 pounds yeah so that's a significant fraction of the overall weight a third is the rider in a car the the driver is a much smaller fraction of the overall weight so if the driver leans to the left or leans to the right, car really doesn't care much about that. Motorcycle cares a lot about that.

So you feel it. And so as a rider, you have much more control and you're much more integrated with the motorcycle than any car driver is with the car. Cool. Hey, so listen, we have to take a break. And so if you can stick around and Jim, you can stick around, we can get back and get into some of the physics of what you were just talking about,

being integrated with this machine and how the machine responds to you and how you respond to the machine and the road. Is that cool? That's very cool. Gentlemen, please stick with us and our Gentlemen, please stick with us, and our audience, please stick with us. We can take that short break. More from Jim Clash, our very good friend Jim Clash, and of course the great

professor himself, Charles Falco, back after the break. Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Knives. As he is. And this is Playing With Science, and it's the physics of motorcycling. Yes, the two wheels rather than the four. We have Professor Charles Falco with us.

You're off again, aren't you? I am. You are. Sorry. Silly. Right, Professor Charles Falco is with us, and of course, adventure journalist Jim Clash. Professor, we've just been in the break.

The conversation's been like a beehive. Let's sort of drill down into the science of things. If Jim's on the back of Chris Ulrich's superbike and he's leaning or not leaning, what in terms of physics and science is and is not taking place, please? And what do you want from a rider on the back of a bike? So what you want the person in the

back to not do anything, because we've already discussed that the rider and the passenger make up a significant fraction of the overall weight. So if the passenger decides to, as you're partway through a curve, to help you out by leaning into the curve, suddenly the bike is leaning much more than you planned for. And on the other hand, if the passenger decides, I'm scared, I'm leaning way over, we're going to fall over, I want to sit upright, again, it throws you way off. And so you want the passenger just simply to sit upright with respect to the bike, not with respect to earth. So in the worldview of sitting on the motorcycle, they're always sitting bolt upright.

Okay. So if we take the single rider, particularly someone in the motor GP, for instance, where the curves are tight and fast and it's banked, it's flat. It always looks as if you don't need to put your knee down and lean like that. That's just you showing off. But there is some valid science behind that, I'm sure. Absolutely. And in science, I mean, in physics, if a student submits some elementary quiz and they call something centrifugal force, centrifugal force, then they get graded off because there is no such thing as centrifugal force. You failed. It's centripetal force.

The force is inward. However, when you're on a motorcycle and you're going around a curve really fast, you would swear anything that the force is throwing you outwards, that the force is throwing toward the outside. So what you want to do is you need to balance that centripetal force, which is pulling inward, with the force that's pushing you out. The ideal way of doing that is if you were leaned over all the way, except you have no traction there, so you can't do that.

So you do need to lean as far as you possibly can to lower the center of gravity and to balance the forces. OK, because I'm the non-rider here and countersteer, is that something that goes on in racing? So I can tell you the term. I haven't a clue really what it means. Please open that box for me. tell you the term i haven't a clue really what it means please open that box for me yeah so actually um way back when i was in graduate school i tried to make a super eight movie about counter steering and where i was sitting i had a friend following me i was sitting on the back of somebody else's motorcycle facing backwards filming this and the concept of counter steering is counterintuitively, if you are going down the road and you want to turn left, you push on the left handlebar. It's as if you're turning the wheel to the right in order to turn left. That just doesn't seem right.

What is happening is because of the moment of inertia of this heavy mass of a spinning wheel, when you push that direction, it actually flops the bike over to the left. You want to go to the left? You're pushing in the left handlebar, which, like I said, makes you think you're going to go to the right, but it flops the bike over to the left. And now, instead of riding on the center of the tire, you're on the edge of the tire where the circumference is less, so you turn to the left.

And that's what counter-steering is. And the thing is, it's so natural that many people who have been riding many years can't describe it. They have to think about it. They have to get on the motorcycle to do it because you just do it. You're not solving Newton's equations and deciding which way to push. That's in your neurons. Jim had something that you wanted to ask. Thank you, by the way, Professor. By the way, that was a great explanation of countersteer.

My thought really was when I was on the back of that motorcycle at 140 miles an hour, and that was on a straightaway, and then we went through the corners on a course at much slower speeds, but still pretty fast. I wasn't thinking about centripetal force. I wasn't thinking about moving anywhere on the bike. You were just thinking about holding on. I was just shaking. That's what I was doing. And somehow I was able to hold on to a handle that was in front of him, but that was a heck of an experience. Yeah. So, Professor, thinking of steering and pulling the bike down, so can you go through what's happening with the gyroscopic forces of the motorcycle? And when you see guys kind of pull off, you're actually not leaning. You're pulling that bike down so that it can get on the edge to go around. Then you crane your head and you look around the corner. I don't really know exactly the principle

behind that. I just know that that's how you do it because that's how you're taught to do it. You look around the corner and the bike goes around the corner. But you're literally hanging up the bike and you're pulling it down because the bike is trying to stand up. So can you go through the gyroscopic forces that are at play there? Okay, so the main gyroscopic force, both wheels have the gyroscopic force on them. But the main one that you've got control over is the front wheel. So you have the front wheel, the tire and the wheel weigh, well I should know the number but I don't, more than 10 pounds. And it's spinning at fairly high RPM

so the moment of inertia is very high. It does not want to turn. This is the experiment maybe in elementary physics labs that are done where the instructor sits on a stool that can spin around. And with just a bicycle wheel, which is much lighter, spinning at a much lower speed, turns the bicycle wheel, and the moment of inertia causes the stool to spin. Motorcycle is like that except times 100. Motorcycle is like that except times a hundred. So when you try to turn the wheel

It's trying to turn you turn the handlebars you try to the wheel does not want to do this and if you Evaluate what the torques are the torque causes the motorcycle to be pushed over Sideways and this is how you control things you With the wheel, you're pushing and pulling rather than turning to pull it down. And then you look into the curve, and just writer feedback, you've learned through trial and error that if you turn it a little bit too far, you end up in the weeds on the inside or you end up in the weeds on the outside. So you've learned through bitter experience just the right amount to turn to go through the curve on the right line. And the only difference between you and me and a great MotoGP rider is they do this much, much better than we can even think of.

Professor, while we're sort of getting down into the physics of motorcycle racing, we spoke about the center of gravity with Formula One race cars and how the lower it is, the better. Is this still a similar effect for motorcycles as opposed to their four-wheel counterparts yes absolutely so you want the center of gravity as low as possible if you have a really high center of gravity if you put like the fill the gas tank is actually a good example because you have um a number of gallons at eight pounds per gallon, a lot of weight up high, which is what you don't want because there, if you can imagine you're leaned over a little ways, but you have a moment arm with a lot of weight over a long distance from the road, which is trying to flip the bike

the other direction. Ideally, all the weight would be right at ground level, and then you don't have to worry about that at all. So many years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, Honda made the first gold-wing motorcycle, not a racing motorcycle. They recognize this. Everybody knows this. Everybody recognized it. But the problem is motorcyclists are very conservative. We don't buy motorcycles that don't have gas tanks where gas tanks are supposed to be. They gave the motorcyclists a fake gas tank up high, but they put the gasoline down low

with a fuel pump. And so they had the center of gravity lower where it needed to be, and they gave conservative buyers the fuel tank that they wanted to think it was a fuel tank. A little comfort tank. Yeah, that's brilliant. What a brilliant idea. I had no idea that was that little history behind the Goldberg. So if you do, if you're able to lower the center of gravity,

do you then, can you? Does it affect it adversely? It must do. The distance between the wheels, the wheelbase itself? The engine design affects the wheelbase. So if you have a Ducati, which has a L-shaped engine, one cylinder is facing forward. That just means you can't have the front wheel back very far.

So it makes for a longer motorcycle because of that. If you have a BMW, both cylinders sideways so it's not restricting where the front wheel can be and they're down low so it has a low center of gravity. The design does affect the performance of the motorcycle. Raymond Loewy, the designer of the Greyhound bus, the Studebaker Avanti, a great American designer. Actually, it was a French designer, but we claim him as an American designer. We'll let you. He coined the term Maya.

It was a responsibility of the designer to give the customer the most advanced MA, yet acceptable YA design. So if you lower the center of gravity, but you take away the fuel tank, it may be a better design, but if nobody buys it, you've failed as a designer. Wow, that's say, between the designers and the motorcyclists to try to sneak higher performance designs onto a conservative buying crowd. So can you break this down? Because Jim was telling us that in racing a car, and I know that this is the same principle in riding a motorcycle, whether you're racing or not. And that is you're going into a sharp turn and you always brake and downshift, okay, going into the turn and then you throttle going through and out of the turn. So you slow down and then you speed up. So why is it always slow in and accelerate out? Is there a physics reason for that?

It depends on the tires. The optimum way of getting through a curve has varied with time, and not simply due to fashion. It's varied by how rigid the chassis were made at the time, how wide the tires were, and how much horsepower an engine had. So what people have, there's this concept of called squaring the corner,

that the motorcycles have enough horsepower now that you can be leaning into the curve, and you, if you are one of these skilled MotoGP riders, you give acceleration to the bike while you're in the curb and actually break the rear wheel loose. It skids. And so it starts sliding to the outside. And then you stop it from skidding. And you automatically change the way the direction the motorcycle was aimed from where it was to toward the end of the curve.

Right. And so by squaring the curve this way, because you have the horsepower to do it, you can get through the curve faster. You couldn't have done that 50 years ago. Ah. It's interesting. It's not a matter of fashion. It's a matter of exploiting the technological capabilities of the time.

So the technology has now enabled you to not just overcome some of the physics, but utilize it to your own advantage. Exactly. Wow. So now then you go on to it. All right. Okay. So this becomes function and form.

Formula One guys will tell you it's all about the tar dialing the driver could be anybody but if the tires aren't doing what they should be doing then this thing won't happen what kind of evolution because i mean that a motorcycle tire is is is rounded and not kind of flat like a slick for an F1 car. And you're able to ride both edges of the tire. So the tire technology must be vastly improved over the years. It's incredibly improved. When you see a 1950s motorcycle parked next to a 2018 motorcycle, it's almost hilarious the difference in width of the tires. Yes.

The tires on a modern motorcycle is just they're just gigantic yeah so surface area is is a major component a motorcycle will never go through a curb as fast as a formula one car because motorcycles only have two wheels right there's that limits the amount of rubber that's on the road or didn't need one time and and the wheels have to be rounded the tires have to be rounded to go through whereas a formula one car the always there's a um you know a linear uh section in contact with the road flattened yeah flat and and flat surfaced to surface yeah and so they always will have that advantage. Cool. Man, I can't believe we're out of time. But before you go, Professor, because you were involved in this art and science of the motorcycle at the Guggenheim, you must have a favorite. Oh, Gary, way to go.

Oh, Professor. What favorite art or science of the motorcycle? Do you have one motorcycle that you look at and go, oh yeah. What's the most beautiful motorcycle? Okay. So my first answer, I often get asked this, is if it's a parent, I said, you have children. How many do you have? Which is your favorite? Oh, I can tell you my favorite right now. I have three and I have a favorite right now. I'll tell you. Okay. So most people aren't willing to do that. Most people aren't, Chuck them a little bit they'll say i love them equally and i say yeah i didn't ask you that i asked you which is your favorite yeah so there was a french motorcycle that um it was all

enclosed every time i walked by that motorcycle i broke into a smile and so just based on the fact that it's such a happy motorcycle, maybe that's my favorite. But I really do like them all. I mean, Charles, name that beast. Look up the catalog of the art of the motorcycle. French motorcycle from the 1920s.

Oh! Oh, bit of art nouveau. Bit of modernist. Can I ask you one question? Yes, please, Jim. Ask away, sir. This is off the record. Obviously, nobody can hear us, except for millions of people.

What's the fastest you've ever been on a motorcycle? Okay, so I don't know the number because when you're going really fast on a motorcycle, you don't want to be looking at the speedometer. Good point. One night in a place, there's this rule of thumb, which is so far work, that if you don't want to speed closer than 20 miles from a donut shop, if you're further than 20 miles from a donut shop, it's probably okay. So most of the country, you can't see like, there are many places like this.

So one of my motorcycles, the test reports say it goes 156 miles an hour, and I went flat out for 20 miles at night, focused on my headlight beam, because, so I assume I went 156 miles an hour. 20 miles at night, focused on my headlight beam. So I assume I went 156 miles an hour. That's a good clip. I do like the donut reference. Thank you for that.

I must admit that. It's my version of the French motorcycle. Put a smile on my face. Oh, daggone it. We've got to wrap this up. But, Professor, you are fascinating. Yeah, we've talked for ages. Let me just say, stay vertical, my friend.

Yeah. Okay, thank you. Professor, thank you so much for your time. It's been eye-opening, very much so. Thank you. Stay safe on those bikes. Thank you. And to Jim Clash.

Yes, Jim, thank you. Thank you, guys. This has been great. I learned a lot about motorcycles today. Yeah, well, you're not alone. What a renaissance guy that guy is. Oh, got to love the professor, man. All right. Well, that's it for our show.

The physics of two-wheeled motorsport. Yeah. Thank you, Jim. Thank you to Charles Falco, the professor. Well, yeah. Art, science, physics, Jim. Thank you to Charles Falco, the professor. Well, yeah. Art, science, physics, everything. We've enjoyed our show. We look forward to our company next time.