Why do circuit breakers go up for on and down for off?

When I bought my first bike with derailleur gears, having been used to riding a bike with 3-speed Sturmey Archer, the one thing that always caught me out was approaching a junction in high gear and forgetting to change down as I was coasting to a stop. Changing from high gear to low gear when stationary and about to set off doesn't work well :-(

I've not had the chain come off many times, and when it does, it's usually off the front cog which is not being changed, rather than the rear one which is changing from one sprocket to another.

I suppose a higher crossbar was thought to be stronger, and men don't mind cocking their leg higher whereas women in skirts don't want to flash their knickers (if worn).

I suppose it relies on a long enough reach from the pedal cog to the rear wheel cog that the angle is not too great.

Miniaturising a synchromesh gearbox with lay shaft or designing a planetary gearbox (like an automatic) with enough gears might be the stumbling block.

A single-speed bike would not be much use: the ratio would be too high to make it easy to climb a hill, whereas it would be much too low to be able to pedal fast enough at a high speed. As with all vehicles (except those with electric motors) you have to match a very limited range of engine/pedal speeds to a very wide range of road speeds, in some cases needing the torque magnification of a low gear.

I wish my electric bike had an extra really high-ratio gear: I find the highest gear still has my legs whizzing round uncomfortably fast when pedalling down a gentle hill to supplement gravity. But when I bought mine, the extra gears of the higher-spec models were all at the low-ratio end.

I think the old statues mainly encouraged the Renaissance sculptors to make pure white statues with their oddly looking sightless eyes.

They didn't realise that the statues would have been painted as it wasn't the current practice.

You tell me. I'd never heard of "buck convertors". Anyway, valve things are more complicated than solid state due to power requirements, heat produced and a shorter lifespan.

Valve circuits are usually far simpler. Due to the high energy short lifetime and capital cost of valves.

Tommy Flowers just about managed to make a crude computer out of them...

or buy a Ludlow Kissel dago bomb

Not quite there are significant differnces . Valves seem to require a heater which isn;t very efficient enery wise. It's the amount of power that is the problem. Buck converters usually take a low DC voltage to a higher DC voltage with less current. we have a lab where the conversion is controlled via a keyboard input. Using an Arduino in PWM is used to control the output voltage from a PP3 battery .

And the weird 'sodering' instead of 'soldering'

Yes, we do.

I wouln't with the first two.

And can't with tighter skirts

I only ever rode one as a teenager.

Aaah! I'd forgotten the "sodder" / "soddering" pronunciation of solder / soldering. Sounds *very* dodgy, like their stress on laboratory (LABratry, rather than labORatry) which sounds almost as if scientists all work in the loo ;-)

It surely depends on multiple factors, including the specific vehicles involved. About 25 years ago I rear-ended a Nissan Ultima with my '94 Toyota 4x4 pickup. The impact didn't feel severe to me but when I got out, I saw that the Nissan was crumpled all the way to the rear window. (It was eventually totaled by her insurance company.) I had several scratches on my front bumper and a single scratch on one fender.

Am 07.03.23 um 21:11 schrieb Jim Joyce:

I once lived in Berlin-Schöneberg, only 400 meters away from David Bowie and Iggy Pop, when I suddenly heard police and tyre noise from a 7x0? BMW driven by a Turkish Teeny. The Policemen could drive, even with their VW Bully, the Teeny not really. The street was not wide, so the BMW ended in the back of a Mazda 626, moving the 626 rear bumper into the driver seat. The car that was parking in front of it was a total loss, too. With the help of a crowbar, they could drive the BMW to the next crossing.

Satisfied BMW customer since then. I could not ignore that. And yes, I've destroyed a 535 in aquaplaning, mostly. But I'm still alive.

This video contains some pics of the hood. <

Cheers, Gerhard

My 'road' bike is a mountain bike with slicks. There are a couple of hills where I can get up to about 30 mph and I don't even try to pedal. 18 mph is about all I can achieve on level ground with a comfortable cadence.

I've thought about an e-bike but will probably just keep thinking about it.

Gaol always threw me as in 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol'. I suppose it's in line with Gerald and so forth. I'm never sure about disk and tend to alternate. 'Ax' is another one. This newsreader flags 'axe' but I tend to favor that spelling.

I'll go with herb. 'Erb' sounds affected to me. When I was a kid I had a book about Indians, excuse me Native Americans, where the medicine man was named Herb Gatherer. I thought Mr. Gatherer's first name was Herbert like Herbert Philbrick until the dime dropped.

I play fast and loose with 'an'. Acronyms really mix it up. 'An USB port' just doesn't cut it.

Square D's first shot at solid state was called NORPAK. Each plug-in module had 10 NOR gates constructed with discrete components. You wired them up on the backplane with tapered pin jumpers that you set with something like an automatic centerpunch.

Academics aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. Who would deface beautiful white marble statuary with paint?

Given the modern Greek color palette the Parthenon in its heyday may have looked like Athena's Whorehouse.

Some of the local multi-trails have 10 mph speeds posted but they're a suggestion. The iron fist in the velvet glove is if there are too many valid complaints the trails will be closed to bicycles completely.

Some of the single track trails are closed to e-bikes. It's not like there are cops hiding behind the pine trees to enforce it. There aren't that many e-bikes yet so we'll see how it goes.

There is one hill close to me that has a portable radar setup with a screen to tell you your speed. The limit is 35 and it will flash if you're going faster. I've tried to get it to flash with the bicycle but it's too far out on the flat and I've never been able to get more than 28.

You're right. 30 on a bicycle feels a lot faster than three times that on my Suzuki V-Strom. However, I have more scars and broken bones from bicycles than motorcycles so that may play a part.

It's not 1 in 12. I've only ever known ONE person who was red/green colour blind.

So they used adjectives to describe different blue/green shades? That could work.