A simple machine is a tool that helps us do work. They use clever shapes to help us move, lift, cut and other types of work. Learn more about the inclined plane, the pulley, the lever, the wheel and ...

When you push or pull with a simple machine, you are applying a force and doing work. And, if you get more force out of a machine than you put into it, then that machine has a mechanical advantage.

Hundreds of thousands of years before the invention of the wheel, some unlucky hominin stepped on a loose rock or unstable log and—just before they cracked their skull—discovered that a round object ...

Imagine you’re a copper miner in southeastern Europe in the year 3900 B.C.E. Day after day you haul copper ore through the mine’s sweltering tunnels. You’ve resigned yourself to the grueling monotony ...