A pulley is one of the basic simple machines, those that harness physics so people can do more work than they could without them. How a pulley works seems really intuitive, until you examine them closely. Single pulleys will transfer work from down to up, but once you multiply them, they transfer work from weight to length. You can balance weight with two pulleys, but once you cross the ropes, you get different results.
James Orgill of The Action Lab shows us some of the weirder effects of a pulley. The weirdest is the floating table, which seems like a cool idea until someone bumps into a corner and your dinner goes flying. This video has a 65-second skippable ad at 2:00. (via Damn Interesting)
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