So I was curious about something. Having a flat tire today and having to change my tire made me wonder. I understand torque and force are 2 different things though related they have separate meanings. So my question is if I have a 2 foot tire iron and I am torquing my nuts. Lets say they reached maximum torque and I can't move the tire iron anymore. Now lets say I am applying 10 pounds of force at 1 foot from the nut. My question is will I be adding 10 pounds of weight to the car/front wheel If I can't torque anymore and the nut is as tight as possible. What if I was applying 10 pounds at 2 feet from the nut, common sense tells me I should be adding the same amount of weight to the car regardless if I apply the weight on the tire iron 1 foot away , 2 feet or any amount of feet. Weight should be weight. But I understand the torque will be increasing on the nut as I move farther and farther away from the nut. My questions is how is it possible to increase the torque on the nut but have the same amount of weight pushing down on the nut(net weight being added to the car). What if I had some ridiculously long tire iron and I was 10 feet away pushing down 10 pounds the added weight to the car should still be the car + tire iron + plus the downward force that I'm applying to the tire iron which is 10 pounds, but then I would have a ridiculous amount of torque on the bolt. So how is this possible for the weight/force applied to the weight of the car always being car + tire iron + 10 pounds force I am applying at any location on the tire iron but the torque will change so drastically on the nut depending on where I apply the pressure. It makes no sense to me how you can have such a variation of torque , but when the bolt is as tight as possible the extra torque from the leverage all turns into the same weight/force pushing down no matter where it is on the lever?
[Physics] Torque and force on a tire iron
forcesnewtonian-mechanicstorque
Related Solutions
Based on what you wrote, I cannot understand how such a machine even is remotely close to doing anything at all.
As for getting more energy out of a system than you put in... This violates energy conservation (or more fundamentally, time translation symmetry) which is an assumption that has never been observed to be violated and is the foundation for many of our theories that have centuries of experimental proof. Nothing is guaranteed, but it is highly unlikely such a machine is possible.
The force you can exert is your mass times your acceleration. By the equivalence principle, just standing still is equivalent to accelerating at 9.8 m/s2, which is where the force of your weight comes from when you just stand still. But it is easy to accelerate more - like when you jump.
The force is only limited by your ability to push yourself off (transfer force to) the willow shoot. Imagine that you lie down next to the shoot, holding it in both hands. If you now pulled yourself up rapidly (the way some circus acrobats can pull themselves up a rope while appearing to hang horizontally) then you apply all your weight to the willow - and if you are strong enough to accelerate yourself while doing this, you could apply a force greater than your weight.
However, as you probably realize, there are other far more effective means to drive a stick into the ground. The key is to convert momentum into force - the equation is
$$m\Delta v = F \Delta t$$
This equation tells us that the change in momentum ($\Delta(mv) = m\Delta v$) is determined by the integral of force and time ($\int F\cdot dt=F\Delta t$ if F is constant). This is a direct consequence of the equation $F=ma$, which you can integrate with respect to time to get $\int F\cdot dt = \int m\ a\ dt = m \Delta v$.
When you use a hammer etc, you give it momentum during a long swing (small F, large t); but it slows down and comes to a stop in a very short interval, meaning that for that short time the force is much greater. A post driver is the tool people use to try to replicate this on the scale of large sticks being driven into the ground (hard to hammer the top of a tall thin stick). It may not be possible to use in your particular situation - but in general, it will allow you to apply a force much greater than your weight (bot for a shorter time). This is also the principle behind pile drivers etc . All these methods require the object to be driven to be strong enough to support the force you use to drive them into the ground...
Best Answer
The torque you apply to the tire iron is applied to the nut as forces in multiple different places around the circumference of the nut. Because these individual forces are in different directions, the bulk of the forces can cancel out, leaving just a net 10 pounds of force being applied to the nut. The individual torques, on the other hand, are all applied in the same direction (the direction that causes counter-clockwise motion, for instance) and so they just add up. By increasing all the individual forces, the increased forces for each piece cancel out, but the increased torques do not, and so you can have increasing torque without increasing the net weight applied to the car.