Question

A house painter uses the chair and pulley arrangement:

a) To increase the mechanical advantage
b) For a fixed-rate mortgage originator
c) To reduce the gravitational force
d) As a method of water storage

Answer 1

A house painter uses a chair and pulley arrangement to increase the mechanical advantage, allowing him to lift heavy loads with less force by pulling a longer length of rope corresponding to the Ideal Mechanical Advantage of the system.

Step-by-step explanation:

A house painter uses a chair and pulley arrangement primarily to increase the mechanical advantage (a). This system allows the painter to lift heavy equipment or themselves by using less force than would be required to lift the load directly. Pulleys achieve this by spreading the required force over a longer distance. The Ideal Mechanical Advantage (IMA) of pulleys can be calculated by simply counting the number of ropes supporting the load.

For instance, if you want to lift a load 1 meter off the ground using a pulley system, and the IMA is 2, you must pull 2 meters of rope. The number of pulleys and the arrangement greatly affects the mechanical advantage. Adding more ropes and thus more pulleys (d) will increase the mechanical advantage further, making it easier to lift heavier loads.

This principle is essential for understanding how simple machines like pulleys reduce the amount of input force needed while increasing the output force. It does not, however, reduce gravitational force (c), offer a method of water storage (d), or have any relation to fixed-rate mortgage originating (b).