This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Levers and Gears
Apr
13
2023
I’m going to be explaining manual transmissions to Gamma in a month or two, so this is my homework for that.
The pre-requisite for my class Learn to Drive Stickshift is an understanding of Levers and Gears. You should have already taken the class Simpler Machines.
As we discussed last week, a wheel can be thought of as an group of levers around the axle. Gears make this easier to visualize, just think of the gear teeth as the ends of the levers.
What does a lever do? It allows one to produce varying amounts of distance or force, depending on where the fulcrum is. Want more distance on the other end? Move the fulcrum closer to you. Want more force on the other end? Move the fulcrum farther away.
What do gears do? Same things as gears – they allow one to produce varying amounts of distance or force, depending on where the fulcrum is. The difference that the fulcrum for gears is the gear ratio, or the radius of the drive gear compared to the radius of the output gear.
The other difference is that gears don’t usually deal with distance like a lever, but rather distance over time – better known as speed.
If both gears (one input and one output) are the same size, then that’s like a lever with the fulcrum in the middle. It multiplies neither force nor distance, it just changes direction.
If the input gear is larger than the output gear, then that’s like a lever with the fulcrum farther from the input. It multiplies force and divides distance or speed. This is a low gear – it provides the oomph (technical term) to get things moving, albeit moving slowly.
If the input gear is smaller than the output gear, then that’s like a lever with the fulcrum closer to the input. It multiplies speed/distance and divides force. This is a high gear – it provides the high speeds but with a lack of oomph. Note that this is called overdrive when the input gear is smaller than the output gear. Overdrive used to be a big deal on cars years back, but that was when transmissions had 3 gears and the highest speed limit was 55 mph. Now transmissions have 8 or 9 speeds and speed limits are 75 or 80, so everything can go fast enough and no one runs out of gears anymore.
Now then, please take your gear, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me
Genesis 27:3
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 10:19 am and has been carefully placed in the Technical category.
