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A California-based company has a new kind of wheel for skateboards that delivers a novel shape and claims a special ride experience. This is the Shark Wheel, not circular, not square, but something more interesting. The wheels appear as square when in motion from a side view but the wheel geometry is more than that. The wheels feel circular to the rider, and viewing them along with more details may help to clear the mystique. The wheels are made of three strips each; these create a helical shape when they roll, and they form a sine wave pattern. When the wheels make contact with the ground, good things happen, say the team behind the wheels - the user gets speed, better grip, and a smoother ride.
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Shark Wheel to Reinvent Skateboarding Experience
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 23 2014, @04:43PM
Sounded like market-speak to me too. Your speed is determined by gravity, your pushing leg, and the efficiency of your bearings on a skateboard, not your wheels.
That said, they look awesome and that's fairly important to many skaters. As long as they roll as well as a normal wheel, I see them selling well.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by rancid on Friday May 23 2014, @05:45PM
I skated for many years and experimented quite a bit with different wheel widths, diameters, and durometers. It can make a huge difference. Ride with tiny hard wheels on bumpy pavement and you will be miserable, switch to some big wide soft wheels and then ride on that bumpy pavement and it will be a totally different, better, experience.
Skaters hate rocks. When a hard skateboard wheel hits a hard rock it has a tendency to get caught and stop sending the rider flying. My initial reaction to these shark wheels was this design seems like it would help negate that by giving the rock someplace to go, in the groves or deflect away from the wheel completely.
It's been several years since I've ridden, but I'm tempted to get a set of these wheels and dust off my longboard.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 23 2014, @05:56PM
Truer words, my friend, truer words. Back when I skated pads were something your girlfriends* wore every fourth week or so. Even tiny rocks meant you got to go stumbling (extremely lucky) or leave some face, palms, elbows, and knees on the pavement.
* Yes, girlfriends. Computers weren't much of a thing then, so my nerd-dom hadn't yet begun.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 23 2014, @06:22PM
My father skateboarded in the 1960s, on rocks - literally hard clay wheels. In the 1980s I rode one of his old boards - those clay wheels are much faster than the soft poly wheels that were popular at that time.
Any "hard data" testing of skateboard wheels is mostly pointless - you can make a wheel with more lateral grip, or faster downhill speed, or any of those easily measured metrics, but it will always miss the subjective balance: does it deform on turns and slow you down? Do you want that? Answers depend on the rider, not a table of numbers.
And, if the rider thinks that wavy wheels are cool, and they don't suck too bad while riding, then that's all it takes to sell them.
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(Score: 2) by hubie on Friday May 23 2014, @06:35PM
I skateboarded and roller skated in the 70's on clay, stainless, and rubber wheels. Then in the 90's when skateboarding got popular again, the rage seemed to be little, tiny wheels. I never understood why anyone wanted wheels that small because my first thought was hitting a pebble, but I wasn't skating anymore to know how they felt (the skateboards also got MUCH bigger than the ones I used to ride).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Friday May 23 2014, @06:37PM
Heh. Yeah, you can tell that's true by the way there's only one type of tire in the world.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 24 2014, @02:50AM
Automotive vehicles exert force through their tires. They are important for acceleration, turning, and breaking. With skateboards, force is exerted through shoe tread, thus the invention of the very flat skater shoe. The difference between tires and skateboard wheels are as immense as they are obvious.
Now go sit in the corner and think about how stupid you look.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday May 24 2014, @03:29AM
Tires are not exclusively used on vehicles that operate under their own power. "Now go sit in the corner and think about how stupid you look."
Remember folks: If you're going to double-down on your ignorance, make sure to check "Post Anonymously".
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 24 2014, @03:51AM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday May 24 2014, @04:03AM
I apologize. No snark, that was a serious apology. "Dude's right about his physics aside from a possible minimal drag decrease from less surface area in contact with the ground though."
He isn't and you're not. Sorry. There's a reason there are a variety of tires/wheels on a variety of wheeled-vehicles. I'd go into more detail but you've already got a good reply just waiting for you to re-read.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 24 2014, @04:43AM
It's just physics, guy. Every joule of energy comes entirely from other than the wheels. They can only provide drag. Since the only part of a wheel that does anything at all is the exceedingly small bit of the surface in contact with the pavement, barring a tacky skin that actually grabs the pavement and assuming relatively smooth concrete you're going to have near zero drag from the wheels. Can you improve on that by lessening the surface area? Sure but improving on near zero is not anything to write home about.
Bearings, that's where you make your money in drag reduction on a skateboard.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday May 24 2014, @05:04AM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday May 24 2014, @05:24AM
What, dude who went on about deformation on turns? That hasn't really been an issue in over twenty years. About the only issues nowadays are how much friction do you want while applying force on a vector parallel to the axle, how much rebound do you want when hitting the pavement, size, color, and durability. Aside from these potentially slightly better designed ones, they're essentially all the same as far as speed goes.
I was a skater too until I broke myself one too many times and I just this month had to dive back in and research for a friend's kid's birthday. Personally, I'd like to try the things. They look neat and should have some interesting sliding characteristics as well as limited potential at save vs rock.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday May 24 2014, @05:58AM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1) by Immerman on Saturday May 24 2014, @03:25PM
Roll a ball across a level plane - notice how it still comes to a stop, even in a vacuum? That's rolling resistance in action, a well known factor among engineers everywhere.
Rolling objects lose energy by two primary channels:
Deformation of the area in contact with the ground by the weight of the object
Surface adhesion - even two perfectly smooth surfaces will still generally experience electrostatic and van der Waals adhesion.
They sound like they should be miniscule, but in practice they're the primary avenue of energy loss unless you're going fast enough for air resistance to become a major factor.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by el_oscuro on Sunday May 25 2014, @01:06AM
I have actually performed a controlled experiment on this and while I wasn't sure before, I am now:
Your wheels have by far the biggest impact on your speed.
On the same board, with the the same trucks and bearings (Bones Swiss), I tested 3 wheels:
1. Bones Street XFS (55mm, typical small hard wheels that most popsicle boards have)
2. Rat Bones black (60mm, 85a, medium hardness and size)
3. Sims B52s (65mm, 96a) hard old school wheels that skaters like Tony Hawk and Christian Hosoi used to use
The hill I used was the parking lot into the skatepark with a frontside turn at the end. A quick push then coast down the hill into the turn. Both the Bones Street XFS and Sims performed about the same, getting up to about 10mph and then slowing to a stop at a small drainage ditch at the end of the turn.
The Rat Bones couldn't be more different. I hit 10mph quickly and kept accelerating all the way down and into the turn. Instead a gentle roll to a stop, I am at considerable speed and am still accelerating. A hard frontside carve is required to keep from flying off into the bush, and I am hoping to avoid wheelbite. Now having completed the 180 turn, I still have almost all my speed and the drainage ditch looms. I am able to get over it but feels like when you bottom out your suspension in a car. Now going uphill, I ollie a curb, entering the park and still have enough speed to do a little rocky off the volcano near the park entrance.
Same hill, same bearings, same board. The only difference between a lazy cruise where you can chat on your cell phone and a full out carving run is the wheels.
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(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday May 25 2014, @02:26AM
That was interesting, thank you!
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1) by Immerman on Saturday May 24 2014, @03:17PM
Until you're going fast enough for air resistance to become a major factor, rolling resistance is the primary channel for energy loss. Part of that is determined by your bearings, but there are other factors at least as large. A lot of it is determined by the deformation of the wheels - as they roll the bottom side gets squished, converting kinetic energy into elastic potential energy (which you mostly get back) and the heat of deformation (which you don't). There's also adhesion between the wheels and the surface they're rolling over. Clearly if the wheels (or street) is covered in thick, sticky syrup you're going to slow down rapidly, but electrostatics and the van der Waals force have a similar, if less pronounced, effect.