Comments on: Episode 111: Motorcycle Flip

By: MSpears

MSpears — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:33:28 +0000

It isn’t “eating dinner and then lying down” that causes you to gain weight… it’s “eating dinner and not doing any exercise all day long.”

By: MSpears

MSpears — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:28:56 +0000

Yes. That was at a “Hold your wee for a Wii” contest hosted by a radio station. The idea was to drink a lot of water and hold your wee the longest. Only problem is… too much of anything can be a poison. Even water. (Yes, the official cause of death was “water poisoning”.)

By: MSpears

MSpears — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:27:22 +0000

They tested this myth. No, it isn’t.

By: MSpears

MSpears — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:27:03 +0000

And I bet you learned a very important lesson, too.

Inertia is PAINFUL. :-D

By: MSpears

MSpears — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:25:50 +0000

No, because brainfreeze isn’t actually caused by your BRAIN getting cold, it’s caused by overstimulation of the vagus nerves at the back of the throat.

By: MSpears

MSpears — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:23:59 +0000

It makes no difference, Richard. The point is, the bike would have skidded, not flipped. THAT was what they were testing.

Maybe if the myth was “Is it easier to push a pole with a tapered end through the spokes of a moving motorcycle wheel”, THEN it would make a difference.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 01:35:36 +0000

I have personally flipped a Honda Shadow at 60 mph. The front wheel bearing seized and it was all over. It flipped three times, the first one tossing me forward like a very suprised ragdoll. I was not tied down to the back, the road surface was asphalt, and the tires had about 10,000 miles on them.

By: Patrick Ryan

Patrick Ryan — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 22:30:07 +0000

People who think this myth was unfairly busted need to remember that they were busting it under very specific conditions. They didn’t say “motorcycles can’t do front-flips,” they said, “if you jam a wooden pole into the front spokes, it won’t react like it did in Indiana Jones,” which is pretty accurate to my mind, seeing as how in the movie clip, the Nazi had very little forward movement relative to upward movement; the energy required to do that just can’t be harnessed with a wooden pole, or even with a steel one, as they demonstrated. The fact that they used unbreakable spokes and on asphalt as opposed to sand/dirt was a testament to the fact that they gave this movie myth the best possible chance, although I agree that Buster’s positioning on the bike might’ve made a difference, just not one big enough to skew the results. And someone else claimed that the bike they used was incorrect, even though they said they got the exact same type of bike as used in the movie. Bottom line: a wooden pole can’t withstand the amount of energy it would take to redirect the forward inertia of the biker in an upwards direction as depicted in the movie.

By: Vic

Vic — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:51:29 +0000

No way this myth was properly busted. Why? Because motorcycle stunters are capable of doing endos.

Therefore, some combination of proper modulation of the front brake, and the cg of the deceleration forces of the rider on the bike can cause an effect similar to that of the movie.

I call for a retest.

By: Steve

Steve — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 19:37:41 +0000

Thank You Bryce and Bob!!! Changing the wheel changed everything. It also didn’t help that they tied a dummy from its back to the back of the motorcycle, thus changing the how the force would be distributed by the rider. Of course, that assumes that the dummy weighed anything close to a real person. I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was 9 and I’m 51. All anyone has to do is watch bikers performing rear “wheelie” acrobatics to know that a bike can flip from the front wheel stopping abruptly. But I also agree that it wouldn’t get airborne like in the movie.