Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
I think post 2 is correct. Note the emphasis on friction. Friction produces heat so that's where that energy goes, probably also some additional kinetic energy. Heat death of the universe and all that. Disregarding heat, the kinetic energy gain in "falling" is equal to its loss in "standing up." Thus coasting through a long series of chicanes on the flat will cause you to lose speed more quickly than coasting the same distance of travel in a straight line.
Right. So that's my hypothesis as well. I think we all know that cutting really hard causes a bike to slow down. It's no surprise that it might kill your angular momentum if it kills your linear momentum.
Now comes the juicy part. The main way tires generate heat is through internal friction aka hysteresis. So one can imagine that a high-hysteresis tire would be more effective at sapping away your angular momentum than a low-hysteresis one.
Many bike tires (like the GP5000) are trying their hardest to reduce hysteresis as much as possible. So what would happen if you rode tires with nearly 0 hysteresis? Would you still be able to kill your angular momentum? If not, what would happen?
The reason I'm saying this is that my observations have led me to the idea that hysteresis might actually be necessary for tires to deliver that confidence we need to flick hard. Low hysteresis tires may be able to handle braking and static lean fine, but are they compromising our ability to "catch" our rotational kinetic energy?
Imagine 2 baseball gloves. One covered in steel springs and one made of memory foam. The memory foam is going to make it WAY easier to catch a baseball.