Andrea is building a birdhouse. She hammers a nall in the wrong place and needs to remove it. She uses the back of her claw hammer to hold the nail and pushes the handle to remove the nall, as shown in the diagram.
dimensions
Length of the hammer: 15.5 cm
Length for the nail: 6.2 cm
Andrea is using the hammer as a simple machine to pry the nail out. What is the mechanical advantage of the hammer?
MA = Effort/Load
a. 2.5
b. 5.4
c. 0.2
d. 0.4
The correct answer is a. 2.5.
To find the mechanical advantage of a simple machine, we divide the effort force by the load force. In this case, the effort force is the force Andrea applies to the handle of the hammer, and the load force is the force required to remove the nail.
The length of the hammer (effort arm) is 15.5 cm and the length of the nail (load arm) is 6.2 cm. Since the hammer is being used as a lever, we can use the ratio of the lengths of the effort and load arms to determine the mechanical advantage.
Mechanical Advantage (MA) = Effort Arm Length / Load Arm Length
MA = 15.5 cm / 6.2 cm
MA ≈ 2.5
Therefore, the mechanical advantage of the hammer is 2.5.