What is the difference between a car's tire and a bicycle's tire? Is it the same? If not, how do they differ and what's the reasoning behind it. When are you supposed to change tires, well, how would you know? Also, I know tires involve friction i just want ot know how it effects it. Lastly, what is the best thing to do with your car or bicycle is stuck in mud or sand?Question about tires and friction. Physics. Are the tires the same for cars and bicycles?Bike tires are typically made lighter and less heavy duty than car tires. Bike tires are also made out of different grades of rubber.
An additional difference: bike tires are designed, such that an inner tube within the tire stores the air, such that the cheaper tube can be changed when it breaks, instead of the tire with tread patterns. This also enables the wall thicknesses of the bike tires to be less, such that there isn't as much payload to drag around on a light bicycle.
Car tires have thick walls, contain metal strands inside the outer wall, and are made out of higher grade of rubber, and are rated to last much longer than bike tires. Car tires also do not contain the inner tube, and have the tire wall hold the air directly.
Bike tires are built in a manner that no tools other than the source of compressed air are necessary to change tires, although there exist some tools which can assist. Car tires need numerous tools to change them, involving a tire rimming machine, hydraulic jacks, balance test equipment and numerous others. The spare tire is kept on a rim, such that only simple tools found mounted to the car are necessary to replace it. Bikes do not have spare tires mounted on rims attached to the bike frame, so changing of tires on bikes needs to be much more simple, and can be.
Car tires handle traction on the road a lot better, due to higher coefficients of static friction, and better design of contact pressure distribution. For this reason, cars can take much sharper turns than bikes can at the same speed, so bikes need to slow down to handle sharper corners...and so should cars, just to be safe.
Here is an example of how I use coefficient of static friction in calculations:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?
If your car is stuck in sand or mud, the best thing to do is shift to a low gear, and push extremely gradually on the gas pedal (or crank the pedals extremely slowly on the bike crankshaft)
