I get that low gears > more power but low speed. I get that high gears >low power but high speed.
But can someone give me the brain dead intuition of why you need to change gear “sizes”? A single sentence if possible.
I’ve tried Googling it but they always use a bike example. I’ve never ridden a bike. Or they start talking about ratios and it just goes over my head.
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One more example. Have you ever used a car jack to lift up your car (or something similarly heavy?) You have to do a LOT of pumping or spinning to lift it a few inches. All that pumping movement over a long distance is gear ratioed down (via hydraulics or screw gears) to a tiny but extremely strong force able to lift thousands of pounds a few inches, where you had to move a few pounds thousands of inches.
Your engine is constantly moving but only able to apply so many hundred pounds of force, which can be converted into a tiny force across many miles, or a large force across a few feet to get up a hill for example.
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