So i know a lever has two sides, the effort and the load.
If the effort side is longer it means the angle is larger, but then it requires less force to push the load side.
Does a lever work because the weight you are manipulating has been equally divided between the whole swing distance of the “effort” side of the lever?
Am I thinking about this correctly?
In: Physics
Here is the way I think of levers and similar “simple machines”
Simple machines *transform* the way the effort is applied.
There’s two terms I like to use in this “transformed effort”. There is torque effort which is how **hard** you are pushing and there is distance effort which is how **long** you are pushing.
Let’s say we have a lever with a very long effort side and a very short load side. This makes it “very easy” to move the load right?
Instead of using the effort in a push/torque way, you’re now using it in a **distance way**. You may not have to push as hard to lift the load, but you now have to push *farther*. You are also lifting the load up a shorter ways, but you are still lifting the same amount of weight.
The same system applied to the rest of the simple machines.
For pulleys, every pulley makes the torque-effort half as hard, but makes the distance-effort twice as hard.
For gears, if you are driving a 4-tooth gear and an 8-tooth gear is being driven, you are converting distance-effort into torque-effort.
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