Originally Posted by
flippinsweet
Help settle a bet between me and a neighbor.
This is the hypothetical situation:
You are riding your bicycle, on a perfectly flat, perfectly straight road, if the wind blowing perpendicular to your direction of travel. Does the wind help the cyclist by pushing the cyclist along, or does the wind cause resistance for the cyclist?
What kind of bicycle? If it's got nothing to extract energy from the wind, I think it might slow you down a bit. If you've got something with some sail area, you can get energy from it just like a sailboat:
