Despite the dissapointing news about former 7 time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong comes a story on engineering skills and never before used materials.
A half a world away, some dutch students from two universities and a materials company DSM, developed a bike, human powered to a top speed of almost 80mph. The students and DSM made the self-supporting shell of a very light weight material of 55% bio-renewable raw material. Moreover, the typical moving parts of a bike, the sprockets, crank, pedals, normally made of steel, were made from stanyl, a high performance polyamide material which obviously takes alot of weight off of the bike itself with most of the weight being the person who propels the bike.
With the inevitable always happening with such events, a test run proved near fatal when the shell obtained a puncture which cause the bike and the rider to loose control and crash, but due to the strength of the shell the rider was not hurt as the shell took most of the impact.
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