Racing Counterclockwise

[Camilla]

Perhaps people tend to race counterclockwise because observers see this as moving from left to right, which is, to left-to-right writers, the natural way for things to progress. To such an observer, someone running clockwise is running the wrong way. (Filmmakers play on this instinct, or so I was told by a film professor long ago–movement from right to left is used to disorient.)

Perhaps running a footrace counterclockwise is physically easier than running one clockwise, if you are one of the right-footed many, because more pressure is exerted on your right leg, and because your left leg has to cover an ever so slightly less distance than your right leg.

So was left-to-writing invented one slow day at the track? And when you go to the dog track in Jerusalem, do underfed dogs chase the clattering mechanical hare clockwise?

[heretic]

Irish dogtracks go clockwise, or at least Shelbourne did when I was there, if memory serves. I believe British tracks do, too, based on the cover of Blur’s album “Parklife” which seems to show the dogs coming out of a turn.

As for motor racing - Formula 1 features left and right turns, with some up and down movement, too.

ben

[millsy]

the only true answer would date back to a time when the bootleggers chose to see who was the best driver. corn feilds would serve as the first tracks, as more and more cars showed up they needed a larger track. Enter fair grounds with horse tracks and walls. to turn a car to the right and slide it thru the turns, the driver would only see one thing …the wall! so, to keep the cars, and the drivers, on and at the track you could only go left! remember were on dirt here not pavement. This story was told by an american legend…jr. johnson

[JillGat]

To avoid overuse knee problems, some runners find it a good idea to alternate directions each time they run on a quarter mile or shorter track.

I remember a guy in the Basque province of Spain pointing out sheep walking along a trail on a steep hillside. He explained to me that this type of sheep had evolved legs that were longer than the other side, to allow them to do this. Of course it didn’t explain how the sheep got back.

[DSYoungEsq]

I remember a guy in the Basque province of Spain pointing out sheep walking along a trail on a steep hillside. He explained to me that this type of sheep had evolved legs that were longer than the other side, to allow them to do this. Of course it didn’t explain how the sheep got back.

Jill, Jill, Jill. My dad pointed out ‘sidehill-winding cow’ tracks on the hills of California’s Central Coast in about 1968. He told me that the cows had longer legs on one side, and that there were, of course, two sub-variants of the same breed, one for going clockwise, the other for going anti-clockwise. At the wise old age of 8, I almost believed him…

[Jeffrey_Ohrn]

I can’t answer why all races are run counterclockwise, but as far as thoroughbreds go, during the revolutionary war breeders in Kentucky, to show contempt for the crown decided to run their races counterclockwise as an act of defiance, (independence). auto racing probably just followed suit, as they obviously came at a later date.

Originally posted by TubaDiva:
**Really? The races at Road Atlanta are run clockwise and the track has been having races there for . . .hmm, nearly 30 years.

I’ve attended more than a few of these races, and I do not recall torque being cited excessively as the cause of engine failure.

your humble TubaDiva**

[scr4]

There is a torque around the pitch axis when you turn the car. However there are problems with the initial claim.

1. Let’s say the engine is the dominant cause of this effect. If you try to turn right, the car tries to pitch up. But this doesn’t send the car flying into the air; it just changes the weight distribution to increase the load on the rear tires. This should be a good thing for race cars. Or at least no worse than the opposite effect.

2. Aren’t high-performance race cars all custom-built? If gyroscopic effects were really important, wouldn’t it be simpler to make the engine turn the other way than to change the direction of races?

In any case, I have a hard time beliving that gyroscopic effects are larger than aerodynamic effects. As for why races are counter-clockwise, I’d vote for the “it’s more pleasent to watch cars travel left-to-right” theory. We tend to prefer everything to be left-to-right. Just think about which of the following looks more pleasent.

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/|/|/|/|/|

The second one looks smoother, doesn’t it? That’s because the eye naturally moves from left to right.

By the way, I heard that one British WWI fighter plane that did have problems with gyroscopic effects of the engine, but I can’t remember what was special about it. Does anybody know?

[RM_Mentock]

How come I have to do all the work?

Cecil’s column on this was: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_113b.html

It appeared in The Straight Dope Tells All, p.113.

Ennius

I didn’t read Biancoli’s Physics, but here’s Franklin Miller’s College Physics, 5th ed, p.175:

The heavy flywheel of a racing car has a distinct gyroscopic action of this sort (Fig. 7-27). When the driver turns the car toward the left, forces F and F’ are applied by the frame of the car. The rear end of the shaft, at B, moves upward, and the front end, A, moves downward. The car “digs in” as it rounds a curve. During a turn toward the right, the front end of the car “takes off” and tends to rise. It is to prevent this that speedway races are run with the cars continually turning toward the left rather than toward the right. All this assumes that the flywheel turns counter-clockwise as viewed from the rear of the car, as is the case for almost all cars in the United States.

The textbook doesn’t calculate the magnitude of the effect, just vectors the legend, if it is a legend. It refers to a few articles at the end of the chapter, the most likely one being Scientific American, Apr. 1961, 204(4) 134. So, maybe the textbooks are cribbing off each other.

.

[JillGat]

[[How come I have to do all the work?
Cecil’s column on this was: "]http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_113b.html]]](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_113b.html)

'cause you the man! Thanks, R.

[galt]

Ennius, you may be right that this force has an effect, albeit small, but the reason you’re getting such opposition here is that you spout complete BS when you talk physics. Specifically:

(btw, how can it be both parallel to the ground and perpendicular to the axle? The axle is parallel to the ground)

This is a dumb question. A railroad track is parallel to the ground. A train’s axle is parallel to the ground. They are still perpendicular to each other. There are more than two dimensions in my world.

I think you may not have actually tried this. I have. Let me assure you that, if you do as I have prescribed, the wheel will be torqued up when you try to pull it right, and torqued down when you try to turn it left.

You’re interpreting the results incorrectly. Which way the wheel appears to want to go depends on which end of the axle you’re holding still. If you hold the left end of the axle still and pull the right end back (turning the wheel to the right), the wheel will tend to rotate counterclockwise from your perspective. However, since you’re holding the left end of the axle still, rotating counterclockwise means that the wheel will lift up. If you hold onto the right end of the axle and pull the left end back towards you (a left turn), the wheel will lift up for exactly the same reason. You’ll get the results you describe if you perform a “left turn” by holding the left end of the axle still and pushing the right end away from you. It demonstrates nothing.

(btw, moment of inertia has nothing to do with this)

It most certainly does have something to do with this, as the gyroscopic force is directly related to moment of inertia. This is why you use a bicycle wheel for your experiment as opposed to something with the weight distributed more towards the center.

[wiploc]

Dirty Devil wrote:
>Okay, I’ll admit that the absense of evidence is a bit
>damning–but let us remember, absence of evidence
>is not evidence of absence!

So you have no opinion about whether the T-Rex still
exists?

>Regardless of whether
>this phenomenon is actually observed, it is certainly
>a distinct possibility—

Wrong.

>if, as one of you who teem
>pointed out, you simply replace every instance of
>“crankshaft” in my posts with “wheels.” It is the
>wheels that create the angular momentum and the
>gyroscopic effect which I discussed.
><snip>
>Instead, pull the whole contraption
>to the right, simulating a car making a right-hand turn.
>Note that the wheel is yanked (here’s my beloved
>torque at work) up as well as to the right. Now pull
>the wheel left. Note the reverse. <snip>

If the wheel moves up when you turn it right, that means you
are holding the left side of the wheel. You are picturing it as
a wheel on the right side of the car.

Now picture it as a wheel on the left side of the car, being
attached (held in your hand) on the right side. Done this
way, you find that the wheel “jerks down” in a right turn.

So, in a right turn, the wheels on the right side of the car seem
to “push the car down,” while the left-side wheels “lift the car
up.” In a left turn, it’s the other way around. There is no
advantage gained by running the cars one way or the other.
RM Mentock wrote
>By the way, I heard that one British WWI fighter plane that
>did have problems with gyroscopic effects of the engine, but
>I can’t remember what was special about it. Does anybody know?

Torque effects, not gyroscopic effects. With a rotary engine,
the whole engine turns. Instead of just turning a shaft with a
propeller on it, the engine turns itself with a propeller on it.

That’s a whole lot of mass, rotating rapidly. If the engine
rotates counter-clockwise (I’m guessing) then the plane
(which is the reaction mass that allows the engine to turn)
must try to rotate clockwise. The pilot’s arms got sore, because
they always had to keep pressure on the stick in order to keep
the plane flying straight.

Also, they couldn’t turn left that quickly because they had to
fight the torque, but they could very make abrupt right turns (still
depending on my guess that the engines rotated counter-clockwise).

I think Camels were like this, and other models.
Heretic wrote:
>Perhaps people tend to race counterclockwise because
>observers see this as moving from left to right, which is,
>to left-to-right writers, the natural way for things to
>progress. To such an observer, someone running clockwise
>is running the wrong way. (Filmmakers play on this
>instinct, or so I was told by a film professor long ago—
>movement from right to left is used to disorient.)

If right-to-left motion disorients you, I am going to
recommend that you stay off the street – driving or
walking.

Regards,
charlie

[RM_Mentock]

Originally posted by <font color=#FF30c0>wiploc</font>:
RM Mentock wrote

Did not. That was scr4 or somebody like that.
<font color=#FCFCFC>------------------
rocks</font>

[Triskadecamus]

Well, not that it has a darned thing to do with racing either widdershens, or desil, the torque effect is quite real, and significant in one field of racing, Drag Racing. (Where, of course, there are no turns at all.) Watch the cars as they sit, revving their engines. They roll to the right at every touch to the gas pedal. The effect comes from the rapid acceleration of the entire drive train along the center of the car. Newton kicks the entire car in the opposite rotational direction, during acceleration.

A lot of design effort goes into minimizing the effect in very high powered cars, and back in the sixties even a few on the road cars had the massive engines which made the problem happen. Drag race drivers learn to counter the variable pressure on the rear driving wheels that results.
<P ALIGN=“CENTER”>Tris</P>

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
–** Benjamin Franklin **

[jab1]

Originally posted by TubaDiva:
**Really? The races at Road Atlanta are run clockwise and the track has been having races there for . . .hmm, nearly 30 years.

your humble TubaDiva**

TubaDiva is correct. Click here and see a map of Road Atlanta: www.roadatlanta.com/trackmap.html It isn’t an oval or a tri-oval a la Daytona or Darlington, it’s a road course. Racers go both left and right on every circuit. And they do go clockwise: Note the order in which the turns are numbered. Also note turns 10A & 10B: If the drivers raced in the opposite way, you’d have a lot of crashes as they all tried to negotiate that wicked S-turn. It’s easier to go the other way. (And I’m assuming the track is laid out this way due to topography.)

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>< DARWIN >
__L___L

[jab1]

Originally posted by scr4:
**As for why races are counter-clockwise, I’d vote for the “it’s more pleasent to watch cars travel left-to-right” theory. We tend to prefer everything to be left-to-right. Just think about which of the following looks more pleasent.

|||||\

/|/|/|/|/|

The second one looks smoother, doesn’t it? That’s because the eye naturally moves from left to right. **

Only if you’ve read left-to-right all your life. I bet people who read Japanese or Hebrew or other right-to-left languages might find your first illustration “smoother”. And cars go left-to-right if you’re watching the race from outside, in the grandstands. But if you’re in the infield, they go right-to-left, don’t they?

I forget who said it, but I bet that American races go counterclockwise so the driver has something besides the door between him and the wall. Of course, if the car spins and ends up going backwards, the point is moot, ain’t it? And think about it: Someone else pointed out they race clockwise in Britain, where the driver sits on the right side of the car.

Question: Do all engines rotate in the same direction? If so, then torque would not be the reason tthey race counter-clockwise, right?

Last Sunday, on The Simpsons, two jockeys complained, saying they’d like to race clockwise for a change.

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>< DARWIN >
__L___L

[jab1]

Originally posted by jab1:
Question: Do all engines rotate in the same direction? If so, then torque would not be the reason tthey race counter-clockwise, right?

Okay, I garbled that one because I ran out of time. Here’s what I meant:

Question: Do all engines, no matter who manufactures them, rotate in the same direction? If so, then torque would not be the reason we usually race counter-clockwise here and clockwise in Britain, right?

Tuba, try this link to learn a bit more about checkered flags: http://ws7.starnews.com/speednet/irl/99/may/0529sn_ddflag.html It was written by Donald Davidson of the Indianapolis Star/News. Apparently, he says, it originated with French bicycle racing in the 1860s. There’s more than one version of how it started, though. It either originated from the checkered uniforms of officials or some spectator let an official borrow a checkered scarf.

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>< DARWIN >
__L___L

[RM_Mentock]

Originally posted by jab1:
I forget who said it, but I bet that American races go counterclockwise so the driver has something besides the door between him and the wall. Of course, if the car spins and ends up going backwards, the point is moot, ain’t it? And think about it: Someone else pointed out they race clockwise in Britain, where the driver sits on the right side of the car.

Forget who said it? Cecil. Oh, and DSYoungEsq (08-25-1999 10:04 AM). How many oval tracks are there in Great Britain, and which way do they race, and which side is the steering wheel on when they race? This may be more than just keeping the driver away from the wall–what about visibility in corners and manuvering? Wouldn’t being closer inside be an advantage? Oh. Cecil brought that up too.

rocks

[jab1]

RM, I tried clicking on the link to Cecil’s column that JillGat provided, but it didn’t work. Your link does work. Had I read Cecil’s column, I would not have speculated as I did.

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>< DARWIN >
__L___L

[RM_Mentock]

Originally posted by <font color=#FF30c0>jab1</font>:
RM, I tried clicking on the link to Cecil’s column that JillGat provided, but it didn’t work. Your link does work. Had I read Cecil’s column, I would not have speculated as I did.

Jill’s link was a quote from my first post, and it got messed up in the UBB, I imagine.

Can anybody answer these questions: How many oval tracks are there in Great Britain, and which way do they race, and which side is the steering wheel on when they race?
<font color=#DCDCDC>----------------
rocks</font>

[plank]

heretic wrote:

** Irish dogtracks go clockwise, or at least Shelbourne did when I was there, if memory serves. I believe British tracks do, too, based on the cover of Blur’s album “Parklife” which seems to show the dogs coming out of a turn. **

Close inspection of the photographs accompanying this album reveals the dogs to be turning left, and others seem to show them moving in a left-to-right direction from the point of view of an observer outside of the track.

Every dog and horse race I recall seeing in this country (England) and abroad (both on person and on TV) has been anti-clockwise, however, as lurking at this site for a while has taught me, there are ALWAYS exceptions.

Regarding ‘ovals’ in the UK, almost all racing tracks and circuits here are unique in design. Not that ovals aren’t unique in their own way, but you know what I mean. They are often bound by topograhy but are also moulded on the whim of a designer keen to build a competitive circuit. This can mean travel in either direction.

I have no knowledge of any ovals - in the Nascar sense of the word - in the UK. I’m fully prepared to be completely wrong about this as my interest in motor racing could be described as ‘medium’, but if Nascar has migrated here in any form then the TV stations haven’t noticed yet.

I agree absolutely with the left-to-right theory regarding the animal racing though. If you’re in the enviable position of a seat right by the finish line (like where the Queen Mum sits) then you want your beasts to thunder by in the ‘right’ direction. If you ask me, it’s genetic. But you didn’t.

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