Saturday, March 10, 2007

Uh huh


















As you will be well aware there are some fantastically stupid comments made by people who demonstrate their ignorance in full public view. One can immediately quote george w for example, or even our very own tony.

The world of mountain biking is no different.

I was poking around here today, and was astonished to read this:

"The Titanium is able to flex without failing for a very long time. How long? I don't know, but as Titanium is used in aircraft and space station technology, it seems that the chances of it breaking are very slim."

What are your thoughts on that one?


See the picture? Uh huh.

1 comment:

Alex said...

It all depends on how the item is designed for the material....which is half of the problem. This is why so many Alu frames failed when they first came out....no one really knew how to design with the material!

From Scot Nicol: (full version here: http://www.63xc.com/scotn/metal.htm)

"Fatigue strength is closely related to another performance measure called fatigue limit or endurance limit. This is an important consideration in assessing the likely lifespan of a bicycle. Steel and titanium exhibit a fatigue limit, a threshold below which a repeating load may be applied an infinite number of times without causing failure. Aluminum and magnesium don't exhibit such a limit, meaning that they will eventually fail under any repeating load, even a minimal one"

This sort of misunderstanding really bugs me and while the odd magazine article used to perpetuate some myths they were whispers in a hurricane compared to the internet...

Alex