Day 01 - Introduction to Mechanical Advantage

Today we are going to start a new unit - Mechanical Advantage. I will walk you through some simple mechanical advantage problems and then you will spend the bell working through Worksheet 6A. While you are doing that, I will wrap up yesterday's practical exam with those students who did not have time to take the test yesterday or who were absent yesterday. You may work in teams on the worksheet, but each student is responsible for completing his or her own sheet.

During our last unit on load management (knots), we learned about the power cinch (AKA the trucker's hitch), which is recognizeable for the doubled rope tension it achieves. It gets that by using a loop of rope as a pulley - which is a simple machine that provides mechanical advantage (an exchange of distance for force). In this unit, we will specify how that works and be able to calculate this advantage for a number of objects.