Ramps are cool. By extending the distance outwards, we can push things up to the same height if we were to lift it, but it is easier. By extending the distance, the work still remains the same, but since the distance is longer now, that means we put in less force. And now for mechanical advantage. Mechanical advantage (or MA for short) is how much more easier it is to do something compared to doing it without the machine. So if you had to push a block up a ramp, and the ramp had a mechanical advantage of 2, then the block would be 2x easier to push up the ramp, then just lifting the block to the same height as the ramp. For more on this, I will leave a link at the bottom which will take you to another page talking about mechanical advantage.
Anyway,let’s do a practice problem! So we have a box full of stuff. And it is heavy. So we make a inclined plane for it. We want to lift this box 5 feet in the air, but now we have a ramp that is 30 ft long. So if we calculate the MA, which is the length over the height, we get MA=6. So our mechanical advantage is equal to 6 right? Well, no. It gets more confusing. The MA isn’t 6, the IMA is 6. It turns out, that there is two types of mechanical advantages. Ideal mechanical advantage (IMA) and actual mechanical advantage (AMA). Today, I will be talking about IMA and maybe in a later blog post I’ll talk about AMA .
Ok, so what does Ideal actually mean? Well the dictionary definition of ideal is – something that we want to happen, but won’t actually happen in reality. So in short it means to imagine a perfect world with no blemishes.
So, in our last practice problem we got 6 for IMA, but why is it IMA? Well, in the problem we are imagining a world where there is no air resistance and friction. In this ideal world, the only factor here is the box and the ramp. However, in the real world, there is something called friction. This will slow down the box, meaning that the AMA isn’t 6 but actually the AMA <6. So basically, the IMA what the MA would be in a world that doesn’t have any other factors except for the machine and the load.
How to calculate IMA.
IMA is basically the length of the ramp/ the height for a ramp/incline plane. IMA = L / H for a ramp. However, IMA doesn’t only apply to ramps. Levers also have IMA formulas, and so do all other simple machines. For levers it is the effort arm length over the resistance/load arm length.
IMA and AMA was confusing to me at first, but after a while I got the hang of it. Learning that there were two types of MA confused me for quite a while but after more research and watching videos, I understood most of it. Some of this information may not be correct because I didn’t spend that much time reading through websites and watching videos on the topic, so feel free to correct any mistakes I made. In a later blog post, I will talk about AMA and the difference between the two mechanical advantages. Please check out my other mechanical advantage blog posts ( this is becoming more of a series about mechanical advantage). I will leave a link down below to all my posts about mechanical advantage. Thank you. Bye. Nothing else to say. If you have any questions put them in the comments and I’ll do my best to research and answer them(or you could just google it yourself).
http://blogs.scarsdaleschools.org/plin26/category/technology/mechanical-advantage/
link to my mechanical advantage stuff ^
http://blogs.scarsdaleschools.org/plin26/2020/05/26/what-exactly-is-mechanical-advantage/
Link to my what is mechanical advantage post ^