Originally Posted by
AeroGut
Right. The tips of the spokes are going the same speed, but the 26 in wheel spokes are shorter, so for any given radial distance from the hub, the 26 in spoke is going faster than the 700 c spoke.
That doesn't mean that the spokes are "moving faster", though. As a function of distance from the hub
relative to total wheel radius, the speed is exactly the same. Or to put it another way, the distribution of speeds of all pieces of all the spokes looks basically the same in the 26er case as the 700c case (at least if we ignore flange height as a factor). Since the total amount of spoke is higher in the 700c case, there will likely be more spoke-related drag in the 700c case.