Q I've been thinking of getting a folding bike, but they all seem to have very small wheels.
Doesn't that mean that you have to pedal very fast to get anywhere?
A You may be thinking of children's bikes which have these small wheels, and we've all seen children pedalling like mad just to keep up with their parents, and that's just walking!
However, adults bikes, like folding bikes get over this by having gears.
We don't fit lots of gears to small children's bikes because it makes it more complex for them to ride. At first, it's enough for them to keep their balance and then pedal and steer in the right direction.
When they can do all that safely and without thinking its time to introduce gears.
So, what are gears?
The very first bikes had a biggish front wheel with the pedals in the middle so that one turn of the pedals made one turn of the whole wheel – no chain, no gears, what could be better? However, if people wanted to ride faster (and sporting cyclists did) they needed a bigger wheel to go further for each turn of the pedals and we ended up with the huge “penny farthing” bikes.
But it hurt if you fell off from a great height so J K Starley invented the “Safety Bicycle” in 1885 with wheels small enough to put your feet to the ground . To do that they had the pedals turn a toothed wheel driving a chain to turn a smaller toothed wheel set in the back wheel. So if the pedal chain wheel was twice the size of the back chain wheel, the actual wheel would turn twice for every turn of the pedals, and the wheel of a “safety” cycle could be half the size of a “Penny Farthing”, or “ordinary”.
Of course the chain wheels didn't have to be always 2 to 1 but could be quite different depending on where you wanted to cycle – on the flat, or going up hills.
Later on, clever inventors devised ways of having several different gear wheels to choose from at the touch of a lever while you were going along, and of course using the same sized wheels.
To make a folding bike the wheels need to be smaller so that the complete thing is compact when it is folded, and can be put in the boot of a car or taken on a train. To do this they have a selection of gears,carefully chosen to suit the smaller wheels and for a given speed the same number of turns of the pedal gets more turns of the smaller wheel.
So don't worry, if you get a 'folder' you won't have to pedal like a whirlwind in a hurricane and you won't need a shed to keep it in.