In this lab, the kids used a ruler for a lever, an eraser for a fulcrum, and a stack of taped pennies for the load (picture a seesaw with a stack of pennies on one end).
The kids had to move the fulcrum both far and close to the load (which stayed stationary at the end of the ruler) and figure out how many pennies they needed to stack on the opposite side of the ruler to lift the load.
Choose from the following options to fill in the blanks below—then check the answers to see how well you did!
a. less than the pennies in the load
b. an equal number of pennies
c. more than the pennies in the load
1. When the fulcrum is in the middle of the lever, we needed ___ to lift the load
2. When the fulcrum was closer to the load, we needed ___ to lift the load
3. When the fulcrum was farther away from the load, we needed ___ to lift the load