Wheelie
Wheelies are usually associated with bicycles and motorcycles, but can be done with other vehicles such as cars, especially in drag racing and tractor pulling.
The first wheelie was reportedly performed by trick bicyclist Daniel J. Canary in 1890, shortly after modern bicycles became popular.
[3][4][5] Writing in 2009, Mike Seate related to the U.S. Army motorized cavalry training in 1943, pictured in Life magazine.
Seate described "vaulting trenches and beach obstacles" and interpreted this technique as "High speed wheelies, naturally".
[6] Daredevil Evel Knievel performed motorcycle acrobatics including wheelies in his shows.
The principles is the same as the bicycle wheelie, but the throttle and rear brakes are used to control the wheelie while a rider uses body weight and the steering to control the direction the inertia of the spinning front wheel acting as a balance.
[8] The world's fastest motorcycle wheelie record is 307.86 km/h (191.30 mph) by Patrik Fürstenhoff.
[9] The world record for the fast wheelie over 1 km (0.6 mi) is 343.388 km/h (213.371 mph),[10] set by Egbert van Popta at Elvington airfield in Yorkshire, England.
[11] In some countries, such as the United Kingdom and USA,[12] motorcyclists performing a wheelie on a public road may be prosecuted for dangerous driving,[13][14] an offense which can carry a large fine and a ban of a year or more.
If someone is caught performing these acts, the rider can have their motorcycle impounded and potentially face jail time.
[16] Wheelies are common in auto- or motorcycle drag racing, where they represent torque wasted lifting the front end, rather than moving the vehicle forward.
Some wheelchair users can learn to balance their chair on its rear wheels and do a wheelie.
This enables them to climb and descend curbs and maneuver over small obstacles.
In an airplane, a wheelie is performed by conducting a soft-field landing or take-off procedure.
The pilot increases the elevator backpressure so the nose wheel of the landing gear has minimal contact with the ground.
The pilot kept the plane's nose wheel from touching the runway for a distance of 14,319 feet.
[18][19][20] A wheelie bar helps prevent a vehicle's front end from raising too high or flipping over.
A wheelie is imminent when the acceleration is sufficient to reduce the load borne by the front axle to zero.
Since mechanical power can be defined as force times velocity, in one dimension, and force is equivalent to mass times acceleration, then the minimum power required for a wheelie can be expressed as the product of mass, velocity, and the minimum acceleration required for a wheelie: Thus the minimum power required is directly proportional to the mass of the vehicle and to its velocity.
In the case of tractor and truck pulling, the force to the pull the load is applied above the ground, and so it also acts to lift the front wheels and thus reduces the forward acceleration necessary to lift the front wheels.
This can be separated into components necessary only for horizontal acceleration and components necessary only for raising and rotating the vehicle A factor M can be calculated as the ratio of the power required to raise and rotate the vehicle and the power required only for horizontal acceleration.
