The secret to riding a motorcycle on water: We explain

Most of you might go Whoa! after reading the title itself. And then there are many who might think of this to be not possible. But yeah, riding on water by the means of a bike is possible, and is even being done around the globe while you spend your days at work. Today, we bring you two methods in form of two videos and tell you the secret art of tearing up the waves on a bike.

The first video employs what most people should have thought to try out, that is, get a bike and dash into the water at high speed. Take a look at the video by MythBusters and see how the rider fares while doing so (fares better than you guess).

In the video, we see the rider trying to get across a water body while riding a dirt bike. He starts off at a distance, gains some good speed and then goes straight for the waters. Surprisingly and on contrary to what you might have thought, the biker is able to ride his bike for around 300 feet before he gets submerged along with the bike.

Now under normal circumstances, even that distance is not possible. So what happened here was that firstly, it was a dirt bike that’s very lightweight and has high power to weight ratio compared to conventional bikes. Another factor is that the bike entered the water body at high speeds which for some time counteracted to the gravitational forces. However, increased resistance due to water leading to eventual speed loss resulted in the bike taking a dip.

Coming to the second video, it showcases famous Australian stuntman Robbie Maddison going into water with his tweaked dirt bike. the method is the same as the previous video, that is, to gain some speed and then ride straight into the water. But he has made some clever enhancements on his bike which help him in the pursuit. Take a look at the video before we break it down for you.

Amazing, right. The guy not only rode on the water easily but also went for some wave surfing. All this on a dirt bike without any sort of Wakandan technology being used. What he has done is that he simply attached two skis to his bike, one to the front wheel and other to the middle of the bike, ending towards the rear wheel. What this does is to simply increase the surface area of the bike in contact with the water surface.

As in case of a bike, the wheels are in charge of moving the bike forward as it would on land while the ski kept the bike from sinking.  According to Arthur Schmidt, a physics professor at Northwestern University,”The motor bike has to supply its own motivation through its rear wheel. A dirt bike is designed to run through mud, a fluid much like water only with dirt added. That too is not a far reach to apply to water surfing.”

The most important thing for a bike to run on water is that the bike should keep moving and not decelerate much. The two forces to be countered in such condition are firstly, the increased friction of the water surface as compared to ground and gravitational pull on the bike. Maintaining enough force with the wheel treading water so as to oppose the frictional drag of the ski through water is the first thing to keep in mind. Also, sufficient speed should be maintained to lift the ski and bike against gravity.