A cog is a tooth on a sprocket or gear.

A sprocket is a round disk with cogs.

A pulley is a round disk without cogs.

Gears are two sprockets which mesh together. Gears don't use chains.

When gears are separated from each other and connected with a chain they become sprockets.

You don't change gears on a bicycle. You change sprockets.


-Tim-

So you are saying that you change gears?

And it's not a ten-speed; it's a 20-speed. A ten-speed used to be 2x5.

so does this mean that Spacely Sprockets and Cogswell Cogs weren't competitors? i'm devastated...

pot stirrer.

The BF King of copy and paste!

How would you call Shimano Biopace or Rotor Q Ring?

Touch my monkey!

Bicycles don't have gears.

Bicycles have sprockets.


-Tim-

Somehow I won't lose any sleep over this information

You used the word "or" in your claim. I do not think it means what you think it means!

Well, if we're being pedantic, a bicycle with an internally geared hub absolutely does have gears. Sprockets, too.

Peanuts are not nuts, yet they are included in jars of mixed nuts and are stocked with the nuts in the grocery. Amazing!!!

This is why I switched to fixed gear. ....Or is it fixed sprocket?

I knew this was coming, and agonized over using "generally speaking" or "most modern diamond frame road bikes as we know them" or other such phraseology to qualifying my statement.

But yes, you are as correct as cut buckskin wingtips with bottle green trousers on the streets of Milan.


-Tim-

You may go to the head of the class.

Thank you for this.


-Tim-

Is it OK to put mittens in the glove compartment?

So does that mean the front wheel of my bicycle is a "pulley" while the rear wheel is a "cog?"

I agree with everything that you say. Just as soon as I can get folks to stop using the word "alloy" as a synonym for "aluminum," I am going to join your crusade.

then what's a sheave?

Life is too short to be pedantic about such things. I prefer to spend my time doing more productive things, like criticizing pedants

No. Wheels are wheels.


-Tim-

A sheave is a bundle of harvested wheat or other grain.
-Tim-

You may join my crusade as soon as you stop using the word folks.

There is no such word, just as there is no such word as peoples.


-Tim-

Incorrect. A cog is a toothed projection on a cog, which is a wheel or bar with projections on the outer edge, which are used to mesh with other cogs. The word gear is used incorrectly by most, as gears do not mesh with one another. Cog is also employed incorrectly (a cassette is not in a stack of cogs) but is in fact a stack of sprockets. But as English is a wonderful and dynamic language, the front sprocket is a chainring, and a rear sprocket is a cog.

Incorrect. Cogs (the projections) occur only on cogs (the wheel or bar.) A sprocket is the tooth or projection on a wheel (also called a sprocket, for clarity,) which meshes with something else: a chain, film, a conveyor belt, etc.

Incorrect. A disc is a disc, and a wheel is a wheel. A pulley is a grooved wheel for connecting a belt or cord to another pulley. A toothless sprocket. Connect two clincher rims together with a belt and you've got yourself some pulleys.

The most incorrect. Gears do not mesh. Cogs do. A gear works to change the relative speed of a mechanism, whether through two differently sized sprocket connected by a chain, or through a series of intermeshing cogs.

Correct... ish. The sprockets at either end of the chain form the gear. All sprockets are gears, not all gears are sprockets. The Old Norse root word roughly translates as "mechanism." So if we all wanted to be as pedantic as possible, everything on a bicycle is gear.

You do both.

This is the English Language. Both folks and peoples are acceptable, depending on their usage. A dee-bah-dee-bah-dee,

So what is the thing inside the freehub that catches the pawls called?