Thanks to the GyroBike, which recently won a Popular Mechanics Magazine Breakthrough Award, the days of training wheels may be numbered. The bicycle, which four Dartmouth students invented, is a training bike that does not use the traditional four-wheel system.
The makers of the GyroBike, Deborah Sperling '06, Hanna Murnen '06, Nathan Sigworth '07 and Augusta Niles '07, began the GyroBike as a project for their Engineering Sciences 21 class, in which they were asked to create toys for teaching and learning or transportation. Then they decided to pursue selling the idea.
"We saw the potential in the bike and so did our professors," Sperling said.
"In [Engineering Sciences] 87, an independent study class, we began evaluating the market, and we hope to license the bike within the year."
To steady a slow-moving bike, the students placed a flywheel inside the front wheel.
Due to a phenomenon known as gyroscopic procession, the fast-moving flywheel and the force of precession turns the wheel into the fall, which steers the bicycle back under the mass of the child.
With this modified approach, the GyroBike allows new bike riders to learn on a two-wheeler without having to use training wheels.
"Training wheels don't actually train you to ride," Murnen said. "The minute you remove them, you start back at square one."
These Dartmouth students were the sole recipients of the "Next Generation" award, while other Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards included such inventions as spaceships and chainsaws. The recipients of the awards recently attended a ceremony and reception.
"I think what was coolest about the awards was the people there," Sigworth said. "It was such an honor to meet these folks."
Attendees included Burt Rutan, who launched the first government-funded manned spacecraft, and Jock Brandis, who created an inexpensive, efficient machine for hulling peanuts in third-world countries.
The students, while not planning any more inventions as a team, hope to follow through with their creation together and to see it in the marketplace soon.