Comments:

Jim Karnopp - 2007-08-31 13:01:14
They should be able to. As the bike goes through the mud it should compress the mud in the front just like a boat would through water creating a small angular wake.
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Ypsidixit - 2007-08-31 13:19:14
If anyone can figure this stumper out, I would say Jim could, just as a down-to-earth and supersavvy individual.

Angular wake? Hmm...is mud in general liquid enough to create an angular wake, as would be made in a puddle of water? Does the average viscosity of mud allow for an angular wake? Hmmm....hmmm.....hmmm....(too polite, for a change, to respectfully disagree...)

Wait--I've got it. The reason why I believe the bike would NOT create an angular wake is that there is no forward motion THROUGH the mud medium. Each new section of the rotating tire is coming down, touching the ground for an instant, and then going back up. The tire is not being "pushed" through the water like a boat hull is. I think that henceforth, in this case, there would be no angular wake.

I'd be glad to be proved wrong. I'm just dying to know, is all.

By the way, no less a famous person than Sherlock Holmes famously got this puzzle wrong, in "The Adventure of the Priory School". He said that the rear wheel would make a deeper rut than the front wheel...but that still doesn't tell you which way it moved.
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Murph. - 2007-08-31 13:28:57
Ummm...Maybe I'm just being dumb, but wouldn't the bike make muddy tire tracks on the "exit" side of the puddle, but not the "entrance" side?
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ypsidixit - 2007-08-31 13:39:41
Hee hee (this is fun). Hmm....shall we allow Murph's answer? It's certainly clever, and realistic, I think. Let's say just for argument, though, that this mud is that kind of dryish mud that would NOT leave a track.


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ypsidixit - 2007-08-31 13:42:19
I could give you a hint, but I wouldn't want to go off on a tangent.
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Ypsidixit - 2007-08-31 21:46:15
Nosir, I sure wouldn't want to go off on one a them tangents. Nope. Not me.
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Jim Karnopp - 2007-09-01 16:30:50
This puzzle has been driving me crazy, and I kept waiting for the answer, but so far only hints. I had to look it up, but here is what I found. First the assumption is that there are two tracks that cross each other. In almost all bike tracks in mud this would be the case because the front wheel wobbles back and forth as the rider maintains balance. The first thing to determine is which tire is the rear one and which is the front. The front tire will have a wider curve than the back, so you can draw tangent lines on each track and the rear track will always intersect the front track, but that is not true of the front track. Now drawing several tangent lines going out in each direction from the rear track, you can tell which directing the bike is going because the lines will always intersect with the front wheel at the same length where the rear wheel is in back because the distance between the rear wheel and the front wheel is fixed by the frame of the bike. Where the lines intersect in the other direction will be variable lengths.
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Ypsidixit - 2007-09-01 17:25:48
JIM! You are the WINNER! You got the right answer! Woohoo! YAY!!!

Here's a graphic depiction of the tangent issue that you explained. You can see many examples on that site, to illustrate the tangent key.

Yay for Jim!
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