Hasta La Ideas

Of all the mean-spirited games we played as children in the ’70s, perhaps none was more cruel than the “Coastie” or “Ghostie.” (I was never clear on what the correct title was, both made sense.) It consisted of you being pushed off of your bike, and the other kids picking it up, setting it on two wheels, and firing it down a hill to see how long it would stay balanced before crashing into something or falling over. This sucked when it was you and your bike, but was fun enough when it wasn’t.

At that age—hell, at this age—I wouldn’t have understood the physics of how something that took me forever to learn to ride could balance by itself for so long. But here the guys at MinutePhysics explain the science:

If the demonstrator could travel back in time to my childhood neighborhood in the ’70s, I think we kids would have interrupted his explanation by pushing him down, grabbing his bike and firing it down the hill. In retrospect, we were total animals.