I’m very knowledgable when it comes to basic physics. I’m a math guy, and physics is basically math. So generally speaking, ‘I get it’. I can tell you how fast you’ll be traveling if you jump from a building, how long it will take you to get to the ground, how an airplane flies, why you are ‘pushed’ towards the car door when you turn suddenly (its NOT centrifugal force…that doesn’t exist), I can even convince naysayers that a dropped bullet hits the ground the same time an evenly fired bullet does…
But one thing I never understood is how in the world a bicycle is able to balance while moving, but not balance while still.

So I decided to correct this and look it up. Thanks to an article over at wikipedia about the physics of bikes, I finally get it, and would like to share it with you:

• A bike, moving or not, cannot balance if the steering is locked.
• Moving the front wheel is what allows us to balance the bike.
• The faster the bike is moving, the more influence the front wheel’s movements have on balance.

So, balancing a stationary bike is actually possible, but will require huge perfectly correct front wheel movements. As the bike goes faster, balancing is easier and easier as smaller and smaller front wheel turns are needed to adjust the balance.

And just to show you that balancing a stationary bike is possible (notice the enourmous angle on the front wheel and the many corrections needed), here is a video: