Science is awesome!

(Or is this in the realm of math? Or engineering? I don't know.)

So, I read today that a guy in California has invented a wheel. No, keep reading. That's not the end of it. It's a wheel that rolls faster and better than a round wheel, across a variety of terrains.

AND IT IS SHAPED LIKE A CUBE.

 

YES. A CUBE. LOOK AT IT.

Okay, it's not SO crazy. The cube shape has a wave pattern, so you would still get a roll on these wheels. The grooves in them mean you don't roll over debris, but they get "funnelled" off to the outside, so you're less likely to trip and eat shit if you skate outdoors. Plus because there are those big grooves, there's less contact area with the ground so you have less friction, which would result in a smoother roll on a variety of surfaces.

So far it's only available for skateboards, but if this takes off, I wouldn't mind trying these for derby, especially given the way these are made. The super cool thing about this is that they're made by snapping together smaller wheel-parts of different hardnesses. So if you wanted a sticker inside on your inside wheel (e.g. if you push more on one side of your wheel than the other--and you can see how much you do this by checking your wheels for coning), the bam! You just put together different segments of different hardnesses and Bob's your uncle.

(That said, there's already something like this on the market in the form of Faster skates' demilune wheels, which were released several months ago, but haven't seen to have taken off. But they have a little strip of sticker urethane closer to the axle on each wheel for more push.)

More information is available on the kickstarter here.