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A pulley is a wheel on an axle or shaft enabling a taut cable or belt passing over the wheel to move and change direction, or transfer power between itself and a shaft. A sheave or pulley wheel is a pulley using an axle supported by a frame or shell (block) to guide a cable or exert force.
A simple machine is a mechanical device that changes the direction or magnitude of a force. [1] In general, they can be defined as the simplest mechanisms that use mechanical advantage (also called leverage) to multiply force. [2] Usually the term refers to the six classical simple machines that were defined by Renaissance scientists: [3] [4 ...
Examples of rope and pulley systems illustrating mechanical advantage. Consider lifting a weight with rope and pulleys. A rope looped through a pulley attached to a fixed spot, e.g. a barn roof rafter, and attached to the weight is called a single pulley. It has a mechanical advantage (MA) = 1 (assuming frictionless bearings in the pulley ...
The Atwood machine (or Atwood's machine) was invented in 1784 by the English mathematician George Atwood as a laboratory experiment to verify the mechanical laws of motion with constant acceleration. Atwood's machine is a common classroom demonstration used to illustrate principles of classical mechanics .
The rope is threaded through the pulleys to provide mechanical advantage that amplifies that force applied to the rope. [4] In order to determine the mechanical advantage of a block and tackle system consider the simple case of a gun tackle, which has a single mounted, or fixed, pulley and a single movable pulley.
A simple machine, such as a lever, pulley, or gear train, is "ideal" if the power input is equal to the power output of the device, which means there are no losses. In this case, the mechanical efficiency is 100%. Mechanical efficiency is the performance of the machine compared to its theoretical maximum as performed by an ideal machine.
The hand axe is the first example of a wedge, the oldest of the six classic simple machines, from which most machines are based. The second oldest simple machine was the inclined plane (ramp), [6] which has been used since prehistoric times to move heavy objects. [7] [8] The other four simple machines were invented in the ancient Near East. [9]
The lever was also used in the shadoof water-lifting device, the first crane machine, which appeared in Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC, [4] and then in ancient Egyptian technology circa 2000 BC. [6] The earliest evidence of pulleys date back to Mesopotamia in the early 2nd millennium BC, [7] and ancient Egypt during the Twelfth Dynasty (1991-1802 BC ...