Previously, I have tried to find “theoretically” the tooth counts of the Nexus-7 internal gear hub. Some nice numbers were obtained, but there were some suspects (you may think yourself what can be wrong with the numbers given in the link). Soon after, I disassembled the real hub and counted the teeth of all rings. Here are the real numbers. § Read the rest of this entry…
Vendors of internal gear bicycle hubs naturally give the transmission ratios of own products. But I was always curious how exactly these ratios are obtained, i.e. which planet gears are engaged in which combination and how many teeth each gear has. This information was surprisingly hard to find – in fact, the only vendor who discloses this is Rohloff! It is certainly possible to just disassemble the hub, but, you know, sitting half-day at the computer screen is more attractive nowadays 
I have Nexus-7 hub on one of my bikes, and I have “reverse engineered” the exact tooth counts. § Read the rest of this entry…
Many math problems are fascinating. Often they are also difficult, so that only those who have high enough education can understand their beauty. But sometimes a really simple problem – such that anyone with just the elementary school knowledge can solve it – can be quite cute as well. Most elementary school math questions are truly boring, but it’s possible to add some spice to this mass.
1 (I knew this earlier) “Dried cucumbers”:
Cucumber contains 99% of water. A box of cucumbers weighs 100kg. During winter storage, cucumbers dried out so that they now contain only 98% of water. How much does the box weigh now?
2 (I got this today, which inspired me for this post) “Probability for doctors”:
Assume a test for a rare disease (which affects 1 person in a million) is 99.99% accurate. A patient tests positive. What are the probabilities he actually has the disease?