Alex Anderson may not be the largest student currently enrolled at New River Academy, but Wednesday morning he won a tug of war against four of his classmates. How is this possible you may ask? Mechanical advantage was in his favor.
Shown above is a experiment from Andy Kirby’s physics class. After an in class discussion on levers and pulleys the students headed outside to apply these new concepts. The first objective was to pull the school van across the parking lot. The students set up a standard Z-drag and realized that this was not enough mechanical advantage to easily pull the van. Two additional pulleys where added and the experiment conducted again. The students noticed that it there are two ways to anchor the second pulleys. Eventually the pulleys were added in a way to offer the most mechanical advantage and the van was easily pulled across the parking lot. After this Alex showed off by winning a tug of war against classmates Tracy d’Arbeloff, Haakon Samuelson, Eric Bartl, Clay Whitaker.
Andy,
Cool project. Great combination of physical principles, rescue skills, hands on learning (where to place the pulleys), and fun (moving the van). It’s good to know that the team can drag the van out of the creek bed if you get stuck on the way to a put in.
Jay
Andy – Can I re-take Physics??! We never did stuff like that when I was in high school. What a great way to learn.