Inclined Planes: Simple Machines

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Inclined planes are yet another simple machine that you use nearly every day. Any time you walk up a slight hill, you are using an inclined plane. Any time you ride your bike or drive your car up a hill on the way to school, you are using an inclined plane. Even when you push your grandma in her wheel chair up the handicap ramp you are using an inclined plane. So to summarize what an inclined plane actually is, it is a flat surface on an angle that is always used to multiply your force. BUT WAIT! You, Mr. Davis, and I both recently learned that that statement ISN'T always true. You concluded while watching the Olympics that snowboarding ramps aren't force multipliers, but speed multipliers. All inclined planes that are force multipliers have a length longer than their height. However, with snowboarding landing ramps, especially during the snowboard cross event, the big jumps have heights longer than the lengths. For IMA in inclined planes, you divide the length by the height, so when this scenario occurs, an IMA of less than one occurs which indicates a speed and displacement multip...

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