I know it's strange and twisted, but some people do it! Here's my current motorbike:



Here's one I almost bought last weekend, but now won't be buying for various reasons:



The yellow one is 1/3 heavier than the red one, but 3 times as powerful. Can you express the power to weight ratio of the yellow one as a number, relative to the power to weight ratio of the red one?

The red one is better designed, more artistic.

How far off is this answer: 2.30769(yellow):1(red)?

a quick try gave me 9:4 which, if you want reduces down to 2.25:1

Ambulance people love organ donors....

You should have seen the cool injury I dealt with this weekend - I didn't know feet could point that direction.

/Bevin

Oh, yeah- my dad has a great story about a motorcyclist from when he worked at the Motor Vehicle Branch in Vancouver. Kinda along the same line as Bevin's

I was going to say to Bravus- more power to you! But somehow that expression turned into a pun or something LOL

Ed D has the correct answer, nice work. Yours is close, D. Allan, but a little high (and I agree, I love my little red bike, and it's a great looking machine).

Just as a quick explanation, the power to weight ratio is found by dividing the power by the weight. We could lay it out neatly in algebra and get 3p/1.333w (where p is the power of the red one and w is its weight), but doing it in fractions is more accurate because there's no rounding error (a third is a funny fraction that has an infinite number of terms if we make it into a decimal).

So it ends up being 3 divided by 4/3. An easy way of dividing with fractions is to 'invert and multiply' - turn one fraction upside down and multiply instead of dividing. So that gives us 3 times 3/4, which as Ed said is 9/4 or 2.25 or 2 1/4.

{ominous voice}there will be more of these{/ominous voice} ;)

And yeah, I've sustained one or two spectacular bike injuries myself. I know I'm by no means invulnerable, but I *am* significantly older and a fraction wiser, and now how to ride to beat the stats...

Yes, but that is the wrong calculation.

You CARE ABOUT the power-to-weight ratio of the bike+rider.

So - what is your weight measured in red-bikes(not kilograms) ?

/Bevin

not kg? :(