“F***ing Pulleys, How Do They Work?” by Liron

Everyone acts like it's obvious that pulleys do a physically possible thing, but personally, I’ve never understood why you can lift a 100kg object straight up by pulling it with less force than what it weighs. “Pulleys let you move the rope twice as far as the load moves, so you’re spreading your pull force over a 2x longer distance, so you can use half the force, it's just conservation of energy!” No, f*** you, that doesn’t explain why a wheel on the rope means I’m allowed to pull the rope half as hard to lift the same weight. If you want to know the secret explanation I learned while procrastinating today, read on... Ok imagine there's a 100kg man lying in a hammock that has 2 supporting ropes. You’re on the left holding one rope, and there's a tree on the right holding the other rope. In this setup, you only lift 50kg of vertical weight, because you’re in a symmetrical configuration with the tree. Tada! (That's actually the trick to all “simple machines” — you take advantage of the fact that the ground/trees/etc are always game to lift or push against the full weight of objects, if [...] --- First published: September 4th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RPWoz6tYQtyinCyrn/f-ing-pulleys-how-do-they-work --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. --- Images from the article: Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.