Lever - continued

In the simulation figure provided above, press on the “Apply Force” button. This demonstrates how application of a force on the left hand side of the lever, lifts the weight on the right hand side. This is the simplest form of lever action. A lever performs two functions:

a. It can be used to change the direction of force.

b. It can be used to multiply a force.

In the demonstration so for, we have seen that by the use of a lever we changed the direction of a force. If we did not use a lever, we’d need to use an upward force acting on the weight to lift it up. For example, we could have simply lifted it up – that is an example of an upward force. But, when we used the lever, we applied a downward force to cause the weight on the right hand side to move up. This is one type of force transformation.

So far we’ve not seen magnification of force performed by a lever. Before we do that let’s establish some terminology.