Question

What is the difference between AMA (Actual Mechanical Advantage) and IMA (Ideal Mechanical Advantage)? Explain as if you were talking to a 5 yr old

Answer 1

Answer:

Explanation:

Mechanical advantage is the ratio of output force to the input force. Or you can also say as the ratio of output torque to input torque.

In terms of velocity, it is the ratio of input velocity to the output velocity. Upto this it is the actual mechanical advantage.

Now let's come to ideal mechanical advantage. It is related to distance covered i.e. the ratio of input distance to the output distance. To understand it better let's consider an example-

Suppose you are told to bring a fully field gas cylinder to a base which is at a height of 3ft from the original position of the cylinder. To do this suppose you bring a plank and keep it in such a way that you can push the cylinder slowly to place it in the desired height i.e. 3 ft. Now, if the length of the plank is 5 ft, then ideal mechanical advantage is given by the ratio of length of the plank to the height to which you are told to lift the cylinder. In this case, ideal mechanical advantage will be 0.6

Remember: IMA is always greater than AMA.