Quote:
Originally Posted by redir
I love how this argument still comes up once in a while 
If you compare two wheel sets, one set is a climbers wheel set with carbon rims versus the other wheel set that for the sake of arguing to the extremes to prove a point are made with rims of granite then no one will argue that rotational mass doesn't matter.
It will be much harder to spin up the granite wheels then the carbon one's. Of course once they are spun up they will retain that energy but you could get blown off the back at the start line while trying to spin up.
But when you are talking about normal bicycle wheels even comparing carbon Zipps to Aluminum Shamal's or something like that, the difference between the weight is just not enough to matter. |
This is what physics and all the data tells us. I will give anyone my bikes if they can discern the difference between two wheels that are other wise identical except for a few hundred grams added to the rims of one set in a blind test. Or move the mass from the rims to the frame and repeat the same experiment. When people say that this wheel or that (within the realm of wheels that we would consider for performance oriented road bikes) spins up faster they are simply misperceiving and exhibiting a conformation bias driven placebo effect. The mass differences as a percentage of total rider/bike mass is so small and the delta-v and duration of the acceleration are also so small as to be well below the physiological perception threshold for humans. There are more than enough studies to confirm this. Our perceptions and anecdotes are not necessarily reality. We are very fallible and terrible and perceiving our surroundings in an accurate way.