Samantha builds a lever to lift objects in a science experiment. The load arm is 0.4 meters. If she wants the lever to have a mechanical advantage of 8, how long should the effort arm be?

Question

Responses

0.05 m

7.6 m

3.2 m

8.4 m

Answer 1

The mechanical advantage (MA) of a lever is given by the formula:

\[ \text{MA} = \frac{\text{Length of Effort Arm}}{\text{Length of Load Arm}} \]

Samantha wants the mechanical advantage to be 8, and the length of the load arm is 0.4 meters. We can rearrange the formula to find the length of the effort arm:

\[ \text{Length of Effort Arm} = \text{MA} \times \text{Length of Load Arm} \]

Substituting the known values:

\[ \text{Length of Effort Arm} = 8 \times 0.4 , \text{m} = 3.2 , \text{m} \]

Therefore, the length of the effort arm should be 3.2 m.