Questions About Research Paper

1. My topic is knee health in cyclists of all ages, and how cycling effects the knee over time during exercise. The issue I'm covering is whether cycling is beneficial or detrimental to the knee over time.

2. The most useful thing I have come across is an article on common knee injuries in cyclists. Because if I use this article as a base, I can use the injuries mentioned as tangent lines that allow me to analyze where in a cyclist's life the injuries happen, why they happen, and how they can be prevented.

3. My stance on the topic right now is that cycling can be beneficial to knee health, but only if the rider trains smartly and has a correct bike fit. With a good fit and a good training plan, it seems from my experience that guys can race and ride for a really long time.

4. What I envision doing in this article is presenting the premise that cycling affects knee health, and then ask the question of whether over time it is beneficial to the rider. I will spend a few pages presenting the general topics on knee health, and common injuries, and then spend the next pages after that talking about the benefits of cycling. I will tie up my paper by comparing the possible injuries and benefits, and then probably make a statement similar to my stance in #3. One part of my paper explains gearing to the reader. Gearing on a bike is difficult to explain to someone in person. Here we go.
On a bike, there is a "chainring" on the crank. The crank is the center part where the pedals attach. The chainring has a certain amount of teeth on it, and every time the pedals spin a full revolution the number of teeth on the ring is "pulled."
On the wheel, there are sprockets that have teeth on them as well, and they are connected to the chainring via the chain of the bike. Sprockets are little rings that are a lot smaller than chainrings, but still have teeth on them. The sprockets turn based on the amount of teeth pulled each revolution by the chainring in front.
For example, if the front chainring spins one revolution and has 50 teeth, the "pull" is 50 teeth. If the sprocket on the wheel has say, 30 teeth, the sprocket will turn one full revolution, and then another 2/3 of a revolution per turn of the pedals. Since the sprocket is connected to the wheel, the wheel moves at the same rate, propelling the bike.
Likewise, if the sprocket on the wheel has 10 teeth, the wheel will turn 5 times for every revolution of the pedals, because the pedals "pull" 50 teeth, which is 5 times the amount of teeth on the sprocket. And because the sprocket moves 5 times around per revolution of the pedals, the wheel does as well. The more revolutions a wheel does for every pedal stroke, the harder it is to pedal, and the faster the bike moves.

5. Something new? I have to say the actual reason behind making the gears juniors use easier was very interesting. I had a feeling it was for knee health, but I did not realize it was actually to make them faster when they are older.