Dissertation

Anonymous

So I'm doing my dissertation this year.

I've almost came to a conclusion as to what I am going to study, something I am interested in.

I've gone from "the use of technology within cycling" to "The use of social media within business" and so far I'm on "An Exploration into the use of technology within cycle fitness training"

Whilst I'm not there with the title yet, my dissertation tutor approves of it, he thinks it's something more unique and there is alot of dissertations done on the same old thing.

I'm interested into what sort of apparatus is used within cycling to help improve cycling fitness, obviously with my research it's going to be aimed more towards amateur cyclists.

One of the things I might talk about is power meters, and what people think about them, I've already had some opinions, some people think they're useful, but the vast majority don't use them properly anyway to give any sort of benefit, but I'm interested.

My primary research will most likely be a combination of questionnaires and some focus groups, if I can I might try to get some information from some organisations.

I was initially dreading my dissertation, but I'm sort of thinking it's going to be a really interesting module to work on.

Just thought I'd say like.

phy2sll2

What's your subject?

You could also look at people using GPS enabled devices linked to sites like Strava to compete against their friends. There's a group over in the commuting chat section who do that extensively.

Anonymous

My subject? Well the dissertation title I've said and my course is Business IT.

I was thinking that, and in some way I am going to talk about GPS devices and I was also thinking about Strava, as this links into social media which is great.

Tom Dean

pastabake wrote:

but the vast majority don't use them properly anyway to give any sort of benefit,

What makes you think this? I think most PM users are pretty clued up about testing and analysing their data etc.

Anonymous

That's what some people think and what hopefully I'll find out with my research.

Although I know some people that really are not clued up about power meters, I'm one of them, but I don't use them, partly because I can't afford them, maybe one day.

shockedsoshocked

Tom Dean wrote:

pastabake wrote:

but the vast majority don't use them properly anyway to give any sort of benefit,

What makes you think this? I think most PM users are pretty clued up about testing and analysing their data etc.

You'd be surprised! Even if they do know how to use them, doing that in practise is very rare i've found. The bigger numbers = better mantality seems to be prevalent, especially when they find out they oughta be riding around in the little ring pretty much all the tike.

@the OP. Powermetres/HR monitors would perhaps be a good start? Bike computers, Garmin, Bryton etc. Then there's a whole host of turbo trainers that give you all sorts of outputs and let you simulate riding up an Alp for instance.

Also have you considered looking at the burgeoning smart phone app market? People don't even need a cycling computer to analyze their rides especially with HR monitors that are bluetooth enabled for instance. Since phones like the Samsung S2 are essentially a tablet PC you can text off i personally see this as one if the next major steps.

finchy

pastabake wrote:

I'm interested into what sort of apparatus is used within cycling to help improve cycling fitness,

A bike? 8)

rozzer32

I'm doing my dissertation this year. I'm studying motorsport engineering and doing my masters. So decided this year I would do something on bikes and then do something motorsport based next year.

So this year I am doing;

"Aerodynamic Analysis of Road Racing Bicycle using Computational Methods"

Basically using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to look into the aerodynamics of rider positions, frames, wheel rim depth etc.

shockedsoshocked

To join in the dissertation talk, I am currently writing mine on "the effect of bicarbonate of soda ingestion on simulated 10 mile time trial performance on a cycle ergometer".