15-Pound, Retro-Tech Flywheel Helps You Pedal Your Bike To Tomorrow. The technology of a flywheel is simple and old: Use energy to spin up a wheel very quickly.
Later, you can take that spinning energy and use it for something else. But you normally think of flywheels as enormous steel monstrosities spinning in factories. But 22-year-old inventor Maxwell von Stein's new bike employs a small flywheel to boost his speed and take a load off his legs while pedaling: When braking, the biker simply shifts gears and allows the energy to transfer from the back wheel to the flywheel (instead of transferring uselessly to the brake pads). Simple Ideas That Are Borderline Genius (35 Pics) - StumbleUpon.