Mechanical Advantage
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    Machines that help people contain a mechanical advantage.  Mechanical advantage is the amount of times that a machine helps one do his or her work.  The larger the mechanical advantage, the easier one's work is.  The formula for Mechanical Advantage is Resistance force divided by the Effort Force.  

MA = fr
          fe

The Resistance force is the force applied by the machine, and the Effort Force is the force applied to the machine by the human.

    However, there is also a different kind of mechanical advantage involved in simple machines.  This is called the Ideal Mechanical Advantage (IMA), which is what the perfect machine's mechanical advantage would be.  However, an IMA cannot be reached or achieved because other forces are acting on the machine and on the object, such as friction.  An ideal machine converts all its work into energy, however, again this is not possible due to outside forces.  The formulas for the Ideal Mechanical Advantage of a machine varies from machine to machine (the various formulas can be found on the pages at the top of this page).

    After one discovers what the Mechanical Advantage of a machine is, he or she can determine how efficient the machine is.  Efficiency equals work out divided by work in times one hundred or:

Efficiency = W_o   x 100
         W_i

This Page was last edited on Thursday, July 27, 2000 .

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