MA predicts how many times your effort force is multiplied when you do work. Imagine a first degree lever (like a see-saw or a crow bar). It has two lengths, the effort length that you grab and the resistance length, that pushes against the resistance object. If the effort length is two times the resistance length, the MA is 2. In order to move an object that weighs 100 Newtons you will need to use a force of only 50 Newtons. However, your hand will move 2x the distance that the object moves. There are many more examples of MA in action, but this is the basic idea.