Originally Posted by
TandemGeek
If you omit the comments in parenthesis, you've got it right...it would be more accurate to describe a wheel as a structure that hangs from the spokes instead of standing on them...
You probably know those are fighting words with engineer Jobst Brandt, author of The Bicycle Wheel Book, over on rec.bicycles.tech. There are multiple threads with arguments over that statement. I think it is one of the instances where the words fail to capture what is happening and one really needs to look at the tensions in the spokes. Brandt claims that it is correct to say that a spoked wheel stands on its spokes. I believe he would say that when you do a finite element analysis or measure spoke tensions in reality, the only change that is measured is in the spokes at the bottom of the wheel and thus it is correct to say that a wheel stands on its spokes instead of hanging from the others.
Whatever the case, I hope the OP figures out what is making his noise
Bloomington, IN