Cars with bigger wheels move faster or lesser wheels and why?

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2 Answers

PJ Stein Profile
PJ Stein answered

With bigger wheels you will go farther per RPM making the car go faster.

Tom Jackson Profile
Tom Jackson answered

The distance a car travels with one turn of it's wheels is equal to the circumference of one wheel---assuming those wheels have the same diameter.

Put larger wheels on the car and the circumference increases and therefore so does the distance traveled.

And since the speedometer is calibrated to the wheel diameter that came with the car, if you increase the wheel size, you will be speeding as measured by a radar gun, but your speedometer will tell you that you are only going the speed limit because it will not be properly calibrated.

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John McCann
John McCann commented
As usual your answer is incomplete. You forgot inertia and the extra energy (acceleration ) to overcome the large wheel inertia.
Tom Jackson
Tom Jackson commented
You really need to stick what is given in the problem presented, John. And developing some insight into the person asking the question would also benefit you. Not everyone who posts a question like this is a doctoral candidate and should already know the answer or what be able to enumerate ancillary factors which may or may not be necessary to answer the question.

As I have said, your have specific knowledge that you can occasionally impart, but you have never evidenced the characteristics that teachers and tutors need to posses.

She used "faster" and "car" vs "sled with a mass of (whatever)."

Sounds to me like this is about distance speed and time---scalar, not vector---concepts.

And perhaps she changed from steel rims to aluminum rims and thus requires no more extra energy.

KISS, John

(KISS stands for "Keep it simple, Stupid" for those who might not know that.)

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