No machine is perfect. Efficiency compares the work you get out to the work you put in.
1. Define Mechanical Advantage (MA).
2. What is the difference between Ideal Mechanical Advantage (IMA) and Actual Mechanical Advantage (AMA)?
3. Define Efficiency.
4. Why can a machine never have an efficiency greater than 100%?
Problem 7: Using the crowbar from Problem 1 (AMA = 4.0), if the IMA of the lever is 5.0, what is the efficiency?
Problem 8: A worker does 500 J of input work on a pulley system. The pulley system does 400 J of output work lifting a box. What is the efficiency?
Problem 9 (Critical Thinking): A machine has an IMA of 6.0 and an AMA of 6.0. Is this possible in the real world?
Mechanical advantage is a measure of the ratio of the output force (or effort) to the input force (or load) in a simple machine. It shows how much a machine can multiply the force applied to it. There are two main types of mechanical advantage:
