Bike gears

[ATOB2]

How do the gears on my bike work to make my journey easier?

[sabrinah]

When cycling a bike your legs can produce a certain amount of power comfortably and efficiently. However because of the nature of riding around, starting from rest, going up a hill, going down a hill, a bicycle with no gears demands a wide range of effort, from very high to getting the bicycle moving to very low cycling down a hill. Gears are a clever mechanical trick to match as efficiently as possible the power available from your legs to the power the bicycle uses. It does this by using a set of different sized cogs on the rear wheel to change the distance the bicycle will move in one revolution of the pedals. As an example in the lowest gear of a particular bicycle one revolution of the pedals may move the bicycle only 1 meter while in a higher gear one pedal revolution may equal 3 meters. The overall result is that the bicycle is much easier to cycle up hill in the lowest gear, the catch is that the pedals will have to turn three times as much as if it were in the highest gear to get to the top of the hill.