Force
Forces and Motion

Trading force and distance

Physics Narrative for 11-14 Supporting Physics Teaching

A bottle opener

With the bottle opener you:

push down with a small force (your effort) … through a large distance.

This results in:

a large upward force of the lever on the cap … acting through a small distance.

The whole point of the bottle opener is to produce a big force from a small force, but the drawback is that you must push through a big distance. Devices such as this are sometimes called force multipliers.

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