Talk:Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics

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	Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics has been listed as one of the Engineering and technology good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
Article milestones Date Process Result July 4, 2006 Featured article candidate Not promoted July 24, 2006 Peer review Reviewed May 17, 2007 Good article nominee Listed February 13, 2008 Good article reassessment Kept Current Status: Good article

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WikiProject Cycling      (Rated GA-Class) Cycling Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Cycling. WikiProject Cycling is an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to cycling on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the discussion. GA This article has been rated as GA-Class on the quality scale. Motorcycling WikiProject Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics is within the scope of the Motorcycling WikiProject, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of motorcycles and motorcycling. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. WikiProject Physics      (Rated GA-Class) Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, which collaborates on articles related to physics. GA This article has been rated as GA-Class on the assessment scale. Low This article is on a subject of Low importance within physics. Help with this template Comments: edit – history – watch – refresh While I may be biased, because of the work I have done on this article, I gave it an "A" because I believe it meets these criteria: Provides a well-written, reasonably clear and complete description of the topic It should be of a length suitable for the subject, with a well-written introduction and an appropriate series of headings to break up the content. It should have sufficient external literature references, preferably from "hard" (peer-reviewed where appropriate) literature rather than websites. Should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. Very useful to readers. A non-expert in the subject matter would typically find nothing wanting. May miss a few relevant points. Minor edits and adjustments would improve the article, particularly if brought to bear by a subject-matter expert. In particular, issues of breadth, completeness, and balance may need work. Peer-review would be helpful at this stage. -Done, but only 2 editors participated, and one was automated. At the stage where it could at least be considered for featured article status, corresponds to the "Wikipedia 1.0" standard. -Nominated by The Anome 22:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC), but failed. If anyone disagrees, I'd love to hear about it. -AndrewDressel 18:40, 1 March 2007 (UTC) WikiProject Systems     (Rated GA-Class) Systems science Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Systems, which collaborates on articles related to Systems science. Systems rating: GA Class Mid importance  Field: Control theory Please update this rating as the article progresses, or if the rating is inaccurate. Please add to or update the comments to suggest improvements to the article. While I may be biased, because of the work I have done on this article, I gave it an "A" because I believe it meets these criteria: Provides a well-written, reasonably clear and complete description of the topic It should be of a length suitable for the subject, with a well-written introduction and an appropriate series of headings to break up the content. It should have sufficient external literature references, preferably from "hard" (peer-reviewed where appropriate) literature rather than websites. Should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. Very useful to readers. A non-expert in the subject matter would typically find nothing wanting. May miss a few relevant points. Minor edits and adjustments would improve the article, particularly if brought to bear by a subject-matter expert. In particular, issues of breadth, completeness, and balance may need work. Peer-review would be helpful at this stage. -Done, but only 2 editors participated, and one was automated. At the stage where it could at least be considered for featured article status, corresponds to the "Wikipedia 1.0" standard. -Nominated by The Anome 22:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC), but failed. If anyone disagrees, I'd love to hear about it. -AndrewDressel 18:40, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
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To-do list for Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics:	edit · history · watch · refresh
For FA: Animate top picture Find or make a picture to demonstrate the forces acting on a bike Copyedit

Archives

Archive 1 - April 2006 – May 2008

[edit] Talk Page Archive

Archive 1 has been created with a link at right. Archive 2, when needed in the future, should be a new subpage (same as creating an article) titled "Talk:Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics/Archive 2" and the link added to the template on this page's code. For further information on archiving see Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page. --AnnaFrance (talk) 04:24, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wobble or shimmy

In reference to a change I just made in the sentence:

While wobble or shimmy can be easily remedied by adjusting speed, position, or grip on the handlebar, it can be fatal if left uncontrolled.

The "it can be fatal" was originally "they can be fatal". When I made that change, I was assuming that "wobble or shimmy" was referring to 2 words for the same (one, singular) thing. The longer I stare at the sentence, though, the less sure I am that this is what was meant here. Did you mean them to be one thing in this particular sentence, or two?

As far as I can tell, authors use either or both of those words to mean the same, single phenomenon. Perhaps after the lead sentence of that paragraph/section, only one term should be used, though I don't know which would be best. -AndrewDressel (talk) 14:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the paragraph is perfectly clear as it is. My only concern was that the sentence might have been intended to separate the terms, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't changing the meaning. --AnnaFrance (talk) 00:40, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Old business: I think the opening paragraph of the Instability section works better now (and you eliminated the repetitions). --AnnaFrance (talk) 15:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A few small copy-edit issues

• Could you check all occurrences of handlebar(s) to make sure they are correctly singular or plural?

Hmmm. Probably should all be the same, right? Unfortunately, I don't know which, and the bicycle handlebar article doesn't help. -AndrewDressel (talk) 22:14, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

• I did a quick check, but couldn't find a policy on whether the initial occurrence of section titles should be bolded. Article titles definitely. But section titles? I'm not sure. Do you know? If not, I'll investigate. Right now we've got some sections that do, some that don't. We need to find out what's correct.

I do not know. -AndrewDressel (talk) 22:14, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

• In Two-wheel steering this sentence doesn't work:

One working prototype by Ian Drysdale in Australia is reported "by all accounts it seems to work very well."

Could we say something like:

One working prototype by Ian Drysdale in Australia is reported to "work very well".

--AnnaFrance (talk) 18:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me. -AndrewDressel (talk) 22:14, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

The handlebars issue is a minor one. I've changed the sentenced discussed above. About the bolding: I hear that WP generally discourages bolding outside of titles. Since there are so many sections in this article, it seemed to me that any extra bolding might be seen as screen clutter, so I've taken it all out. --AnnaFrance (talk) 19:40, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Turn normal to the plane

In the first paragraph of the Tires section, could we get a brief definition of the term "normal" in parentheses? I think the lay reader can infer the gist of most of the technical terms in this article (contact patch, side slip, etc.), but this one may be a little advanced. --AnnaFrance (talk) 20:20, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Tried to make clearer without just defining normal in parentheses. That's what the wikilink is for, right? -AndrewDressel (talk) 15:41, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

It does seem more understandable now (it's a little difficult to imagine reading it for the first time now). About the wikilinks, as I understand from the WP guidelines, we should try to reserve them for further reading or more in-depth reading. The article, though, should be intelligible to a lay person in itself. That's the ideal, which becomes less attainable, surely, the more technical the article's subject becomes. This particular article is in a rather gray area: most is within the average person's grasp, but some material is necessarily more advanced. I think it does a remarkable job of making technical information understandable. --AnnaFrance (talk) 17:45, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Opening definition

I'm going to go back through the article now with an extensive list of WP:MOS guidelines, to try to find any small points missed before. (If anyone would rather that I stop with the nitpicking, please just say so.) One small item that I think would be worth some real effort to get perfect is the opening definition of the article's subject. As a grammatical sentence, I don't think it works all that well:

Bicycle and motorcycle dynamics is the science of the motion of bicycles and motorcycles, in entirety or in parts, due to the forces acting on them during balancing, steering, braking, and suspension.

The part that's bothering me is "the forces acting on them during...suspension". That doesn't sound right. Grammatically, it would certainly be best to have a fourth -ing, but "suspending" obviously is ridiculous. Is there a way of referring to all four elements that would be appropriate to all of them? Or am I not interpreting this correctly? --AnnaFrance (talk) 17:59, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

You're reading it right. It is non-parallel. I don't like the science of the motion of either. -AndrewDressel (talk) 19:48, 9 June 2008 (UTC)