Rusted bolts

We use a wrench to turn nuts on bolts because they require less force. Consider a hexagonal nut 1 cm 1~\mbox{cm} in diameter. We can tighten this nut with one of two wrenches, wrench A with lever arm 10 cm 10~\mbox{cm} and wrench B with lever arm 20 cm 20~\mbox{cm} . Both wrenches have a very small mass, so you may neglect their masses in this problem. What is the ratio of the total work it would take to tighten the nut one full turn with wrench A to the total work it would take with wrench B?


The answer is 1.

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3 solutions

Noel Lo
Oct 9, 2013

Come to think of it, this is actually a trick question of sorts. WORK DONE would be the same for both wrenches as the nut would create the same moment. The difference lies in the amount of FORCE needed. Do not confuse the question with the ratio of the FORCE needed to tighten the nut with wrench A to the FORCE needed to tighten the nut with wrench B. The answer would have been 2 since in wrench A, the applied force only travels half the distance as compared to wrench B. It is the FORCE which varies, not the WORK DONE.

Levers can make the work easier but because of the law of conservation of energy they cannot change the work required. Thus the answer is 1.

Sorry but this is slightly incorrect. Levers do make work easier , that's precisely why they're used: a longer lever means less force is required (by moments) and therefore it is easier to do the work.

However you need to do the same amount of work in total.

Jonathan Lowe - 7 years, 8 months ago
Louie Tan Yi Jie
Oct 10, 2013

Uh, I guessed.

More specifically, if we assume that the wrenches are massless then no (kinetic) work could have been done on the wrenches. The only work done is on the nut (potential and kinetic), which is exactly the same no matter how the nut was tightened.

So did I

Edward Jiang - 7 years, 8 months ago

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