The difference between the degenerate and nondegenerate cases has to do with the properties of the numbers involved. The combination of ( n = 20, l = 100) has radically different properties from ( n = 20, l = 101). The key difference is that 20 and 101 are "relatively prime" meaning that they have no factors in common. This means that their least common multiple, their LCM, is a large number—it is, in fact, equal to l × n = 20 × 101 = 2020. Whereas the LCM of 20 and 100 is only 100. The l = 101 bicycle has a long period —it passes through many different states before returning back to the beginning—whereas the l = 100 bicycle has a period of only a few states.