Andrea is building a birdhouse. She hammers a nail 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 nail, as shown in the diagram.
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
0.2
b
0.4
c
5.4
d
2.5
1 answer
The length of the handle (effort arm) is greater than the perpendicular distance from the nail to the fulcrum (load arm) in this case, so the hammer is acting as a lever with a mechanical advantage greater than 1. Without specific measurements, it's difficult to calculate the exact mechanical advantage, but option d, 2.5, is a reasonable estimate for a typical claw hammer.