Wheels: an essential part to almost every project

Almost every project uses wheels. they are one of the oldest, most used, and most important mechanical device ever. but sometimes it seems hard to make your own wheels. even though it seems as though you cannot get anymore strait forward. all you need technically is a round object (more specifically a cylindrical object). but it seems that simply using rollers will not do for everything and every project uses different axles, different motors, different sized bodies and so on. for this reason the same type of wheel will not work for every thing. the first thing that we should do is look at why and how the wheel works so well. Like most things there is physics behind it, and when you look at the physics in things it can surprise you how much is really going on in such a simple thing. 

Step 1 The physics of the wheel

It seems that there should not be much going on in an object as simple as a wheel, but there is actually a lot happening. To begin imagine trying to move a heavy object. Let's say it is too heavy to heavy to lift so you have to drag it. lets also say you are on a completely flat landscape so gravity is not an issue. Your main problem in moving this object is going to be the friction it has with the ground. to overcome this a lot of ancient civilizations used wooded sleds to reduce the amount of contact with the ground the object had which would in turn reduce friction. But even if you were to place the object on the sled there would still be a lot of resistance. to overcome this it would probably be best to use a wheel because it is very good at reducing the friction. But how does it do this? If you are to look closely at a moving wheel, you'll notice that the point of contact on the wheel is not being dragged across the ground like with a sled. the point of contact is constantly changing so that there is no dragging. No dragging means that theoretically there should be no friction. However we know this not to be true. there is still friction in the wheel. if you were to place our heavy object on a cart and roll it across the flat road, it would slow down and stop (though not as fast as the sled by any stretch of the imagination). the main source of friction on wheels would be in the axles. where there is dragging going on between a rod and a hole the rod is in, though this friction is limited and very small compared to the sled. there is another source of friction in the wheels, which comes from the fact that there are going to be small deformations in the wheels which will cause friction with the ground, but again very little.

Comments

[artisnotfart]

very elaborate