Italy 2

Daniele Macuglia (17)

City/Region: Tolmezzo, Friuli Hobbies: Writing Career: Physicist School: Istituti Tecnico Industriale - A.Malignani

Matteo Marcuzzi (17)

City/Region: Colloredo di Montealbano, Friuli E-mail: matteo.marcuzzi@libero.it Hobbies: Playing the piano Career: Scientist School: Istituti Tecnico Industriale - A.Malignaniu

Jacopo Mauro (16)

City/Region: Reana dek Rojale, Friuli Hobbies: Volleyball Career: Informatic Engineer School: Istituti Tecnico Industriale - A.Malignani

Development of an Eccentric Crank for a Bicycle

Cycling is a much studied human activity. And while metabolic efficiency has been researched in-depth, Daniele, Matteo and Jacopo were convinced that also some more work was required on the design of the bicycle itself to minimise human effort and maximise performance. So they took the recent "Zamporo" bicycle crank design a stage further and developed their own improved bicycle crank. They wished to verify the possible variations in the muscular activity pattern during the cycling movement induced by their newly developed crank. This new crank permits a variable arm length in relation to the angular displacement of the crank itself. Then they analysed the pedalling performance on a cycling ergometer under strictly controlled conditions. They used a technique for measuring muscle activity on the surface of the skin by means of both electromyography and electrogoniometry in order to record the electrical activity of a representative muscle and the angular displacement of the knee joint. Their data indicated that there is a substantial variation of the length of the arm muscular activity of the main flexor and extensor muscles. The trio's new crank they state can significantly improve ones pedalling performance according to your own physiological capabilities .