But the numbers are surely just nominally designated there is no reason why 1 should not be when your legs are burning. No 1 is normally considered to be the top position so why is the 1st gear not designated/considered to be the highest?
You can call me stupid, just don't call me late for dinner.
Pahh! My shifter window tells me (roughly) what gear im in!
WOW I haven't seen one of those in years!Pahh! My shifter window tells me (roughly) what gear im in!
Plus a dob of white paint to indicate 13t, my preferred bikepark gear on the start ramp, as the old neck won't allow the required degree of movement to look these days
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Most likely cause water gets in and they mist up permantley.
the top gear, ie the one that goes faster, is the biggest one, obviously. the extra teeth give more power, fisics, innit.I think I get it, I have one question...which one is the top gear?
On bikes, only if it's at the front! But I can't think of an e-bike with more than one gear at the front. So, we've all been talking about the gears at the back.
Yes, up shifting is when the chain moves down the cassette. Yes, down shifting is when the chain moves up the cassette. This all makes perfect sense!
It all makes sense when you realize that gearing is mathematical and refers to higher or lower gear ratios (gear multiplication). A higher gear turns one crank revolution into a higher number of wheel revolutions.
Not if your one of those fair weather cyclistsMost likely cause water gets in and they mist up permantley.
It was a joke, hehe.On bikes, only if it's at the front! But I can't think of an e-bike with more than one gear at the front. So, we've all been talking about the gears at the back.
To get back to the original post.. "Why does the cycling world think moving up a gear is actually moving to a larger sprocket on the cassette (easier pedalling, lower gearing) when it really means moving to a smaller sprocket or taller gear?"
I suspect that it has its roots in the motoring world. The gears were numbered from 1 (the lowest) and the others were higher (2, 3,4...). So, moving up a gear meant going faster! No-one saw the gears inside the car's gearbox, so the size of the gears was never something that could cause confusion.
To transfer that analogy across to bikes, you have to go back to when we had three gears on the front. 1st gear was the slow one, middle was the 2nd gear, the fastest was the third one, so the analogy still worked. The fact that the teeth were getting smaller was irrelevant. Because you can see the gears it has become confusing. Now although we have simplified the gearing (1x for ex), the concept remains, but because you can see the gears, it still confuses.
But the concept of "moving up a gear" has stuck. I agree it is physically wrong, but that's language and history for you.
If the gear shifter was numbered 1-12 (as they used to be for lower numbers) and you couldn't see the actual gears, there would be no confusion.
