Take the 2-minute tour ×  There are claims often made that, eg,
"An ounce of weight at the rims is like adding 7 ounces of frame
weight." This is "common knowledge", but a few of us are
skeptical, and our crude attempts at working out the math seem
to support that skepticism.  So, let's assume a standard 700C
bicycle tire, which has an outside radius of about 36cm, a bike
weighing 90Kg with bike and rider, and a tire+tube+rim weighting
950g. With the simplifying assumption that all the wheel mass is
at the outer diameter, how much effect does adding a gram of
additional weight at the outer diameter have on acceleration, vs
adding a gram of weight to the frame+rider?  I asked this
question over in the physics Stack Exchange.  share|improve this
question add comment  1 Answer  up vote 7 down vote accepted
The answer I got was 2x -- adding one ounce (or gram) to the
wheel at the outer diameter (ie, the tread) is equivalent, in
terms of force/energy needed to accelerate, to adding twice that
amount to the bike f