Interesting Facts About a Wheel & Axle

Wheels have various shapes and sizes.

The wheel and axle system operates on an interesting principle. It has many applications and a long history.

The Principle

A wheel and axle system will augment either force or speed. If the ratio of the circumference of the wheel to the circumference of the axle is five to one (5:1), applying force to the wheel will rotate the axle with a force five times as great as the force applied to the wheel, and applying force to the axle will rotate the wheel with a speed five times as great as the rotational speed of the axle.

Applications

Beside the wheel and axle systems of such vehicles as tractors and jeeps, other common devices possess a wheel and axle system. In a screw driver, the handle is the wheel, and the axle is the part on the bottom that turns the screw. In the old-fashioned windlass to draw up water from open wells, the wheel is the rotating crank-like handle and the axle is the cylinder around which the rope winds as it draws up the bucket of water.

History

The first pictorial evidence of a wagon with wheels occurs in a picture on a ceramic pot from the fourth millennium B.C., discovered in Bronocice in south-central Poland. The Sumerians invented the potter's wheel even earlier and used the wheel regularly on wagons at least by the third millennium B.C.

References

• Utah State Office of Education: Wheel and Axle
• "Serway's College Physics"; Jerry S. Faughn, Raymond A. Serway, Chris Vuille and Charles A Bennett; 2006
• The Hindu Universe: Dawn of the Bronze Age ...
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Human Societies
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Wagons in Hallstatt Period ...