LEVER LAB: Calculate Mechanical Advantage

Materials Needed: Ruler, Pennies, Pencil (or other object to serve as a fulcrum), Tape to hold fulcrum

Design: Set up your experiment as pictured. You will be measuring the amount of effort needed to raise a penny, by balancing pennies on the opposite side of the lever. The fulcrum can then be moved to illustrate how effort force changes.

Data: Move the fulcrum toward the single penny and record the distances required to balance the penny.
Hint: At the center of the ruler , it should require only one penny to balance.

Mass of 1 Penny in KG ______________			Weight of 1 Penny in Newtons (m x 9.8 m/s2) _______
Distance Effort (distance in m from fulcrum to stack)	Distance Reistance (distance in m from single penny to fulcrum)	Mechanical Advantage; Effort distance/Resistance Distance	Resistance Force	Effort Force (N), weight of the stack of pennies	Mechanical Advantage; Resistance Force / Effort Force

1. In your own words describe how changing the location of the fulcrum affected the amount of force necessary to balance the single penny to the stack of pennies. You can use drawing to help with your description.

 

 

 

 

2. As the Distance Effort increased, the mechanical advantage [ increased / decreased / stayed the same ]
As the Distance Effort increased, the number of pennies in the stack had to be [ increased / decreased ] in order to balance.