Hmmmm.
F=ma says light wheels only help under acceleration. I suppose the theory is that once you are up to a constant and high speed, with zero acceleration, the extra mass just acts as a lovely flywheel.
Those masses at the rim would make it very hard to respond to an attack or to surge on a hill, but if you just wanted to stick at 25mph on the flat, I can see how it might work.
It's more complicated when you have wheels. As any
fule synchrotron physicist kno, something moving in a circle is constantly being accelerated. On top of that, the wheel is fixed to a bike which is moving along the road. So at any given moment, the bottom of the wheel, in contact with the road is stationary, while the top of the wheel is moving at twice the speed of the bike.
Luckily the accelerations around the wheel balance each other out (the importance of perfectly balanced wheels) if you are rolling along at a perfectly steady speed. However, suppose you are pushing hard, stamping on the pedals - the bike will be making small accelerations with each stamp. That accelartion/deceleration is
doubled at the wheel rim.
So if this device keeps the wheel moving at a more constant speed, then it's entirely possible it may reduce the amount of effort being lost to accelerations in the wheel and leave it for overcoming resistance.
It's not an April Fool, is it?
Quite likely!
