What exactly is Mechanical Advantage??

So, what is Mechanical advantage and how does it work? After doing much extensive research and reading (aka a google search), I have come to a conclusion (we learned this in class, I’m just kidding about the google search). Mechanical advantage, also written as MA in formulas, is a number that doesn’t have any meaning. Ok, fine. The number that you get when calculating mechanical advantage is how many times the input force the machine will output. Have I lost you yet? Ok, to make this simpler and easier to understand, imagine that you go to a store and buy a lever that will throw a ball. It advertises that the machine has a mechanical advantage of 1. Great!  You think as you go to buy it, “ One is better than zero” So later, you go put the contraption on your arm to see how much farther you throw now. To your surprise, you seem to be throwing the ball the same distance! So you take off the machine and throw the ball normally. Lands in the same spot. That’s when you realize that any number multiplied by 1 will be the same and you just got ripped off. So the moral of the story is don’t fall for scams and don’t waste your money on stupid things that won’t do anything for you and make sure you can get a refund! Ok, but as it turns out, a low mechanical advantage isn’t too bad. Check out my other post for me going deeper into a topic that I don’t understand! So, Peter, some of you might be wondering. Did you make a story about mechanical advantage just to make your blog post longer? To that my friends, the answer is yes. However you can take away some things from the story, like how mechanical advantage works and I already told you what it is, but the most important lesson of all is…um…. hold on…. you know what, I give up,  just decide for yourself.

 

http://blogs.scarsdaleschools.org/plin26/2020/05/25/ma/

Link to my other blog post about MA that I don’t recommend you read.

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