Originally Posted by MMACH 5
If you were able to relax your arm, it was due to the bicycle having enough momentum in a forward direction to overcome the other forces being applied to its front wheel.
I disagree, Mmach 5 - the simple forward momentum of the bike doesn't keep it upright, it just keeps it moving forward. If you slid an upright piece of plywood on it's edge along a skating rink and let go, the forward momentum wouldn't stop it from falling over to the side. The only kind of momentum that
might keep a bike upright is the "angular momentum" of the spinning wheels, which we in this thread have nicknamed "gyro", short for gyroscopic effect. My experiment was an amateurish attempt to see how effective that force is, since I no longer have the skill or knowledge I might once have had, to actually do the physics calculations.
Robert