I had this thought a while back, too. So I looked into it, and tire design is actually fascinating!
Think about it - a many-thousand-pound device travelling 60-100mph and gripping the road only through the bits of tire that contact the road. Each tire, under load, only touches the pavement in a space about the size of a deck of cards.
And these four small contact points have to swing this one+ ton of machine around corners, at speed, without losing contact.
There's a lot of good engineering in tires.
If you think that’s impressive you should look into the tires they use on the moon think what would balloons do in a vacuum? BOOM, so they have to be made out of a synthetic material that is maluable but will reform its structure after being deformed they are actual magic.
I had this thought a while back, too. So I looked into it, and tire design is actually fascinating!
Think about it - a many-thousand-pound device travelling 60-100mph and gripping the road only through the bits of tire that contact the road. Each tire, under load, only touches the pavement in a space about the size of a deck of cards.
And these four small contact points have to swing this one+ ton of machine around corners, at speed, without losing contact.
There's a lot of good engineering in tires.
If you think that’s impressive you should look into the tires they use on the moon think what would balloons do in a vacuum? BOOM, so they have to be made out of a synthetic material that is maluable but will reform its structure after being deformed they are actual magic.
https://youtu.be/K6vJMIksp6o