Originally Posted by DirtPedalerB
the only place you can really feel extra weight on a bike is in the rear tire/wheel.. you have to pay for the weight there twice you have to spin it up and carry it with you the 26er has the advantage here..
Two times a really small number is still a really small number.
The energy required to accelerate the ENTIRE system including non-rotating bike parts and the rider dwarfs that of spinning the wheels. People "feel" all kinds of things that aren't there, especially when they're expecting to feel it (placebo effect).
A little bit of knowledge can be a bad thing. It's very easy to misapply a principle (rotational inertia) when you don't know how to work it into context. If a bicycle consisting solely of two spinning wheels with a phantom frame and ghost rider, you'd would be 100% corret. However, it isn't. I can get that heavy wheel up to 7mph with my pinkie, but my pinkie wouldn't help me accelerating the entire bike system (including my fat ass) up to 7mph. For that I need the big powerful muscles in my upper thighs and torso as the power required to get all that up to 7mph is quite a bit more then spinning a wheel.
Tell you what. Chew on this statement for a while:
There are no two 10# dumb-bells in any gym that weigh the same.
Debunk the claim above and you will have discovered why what you're saying is indeed technically correct, but effectively misleading.