Wheel and axle

The wheel and axle is one of six simple machines identified by Renaissance scientists drawing from Greek texts on technology. The wheel and axle consists of a wheel attached to a smaller axle so that these two parts rotate together in which a force is transferred from one to the other. A hinge or bearing supports the axle, allowing rotation. It can amplify force; a small force applied to the periphery of the large wheel can move a larger load attached to the axle.

Greek philosophers such as Hero of Alexandria first identified the wheel and axle as one of the simple machines used to lift weights. This is thought to have been in the form of the windlass which consists of a crank or pulley connected to a cylindrical barrel that provides mechanical advantage to wind up a rope and lift a load such as a bucket from the well.

The wheel and axle can be viewed as a version of the lever, with a drive force applied tangentially to the perimeter of the wheel and a load force applied to the axle, respectively, that are balanced around the hinge which is the fulcrum. The mechanical advantage of the wheel and axle is the ratio of the distances from the fulcrum to the applied loads, or what is the same thing the ratio of the diameter of the wheel and axle. A major application is in wheeled vehicles, in which the wheel and axle are used to reduce friction of the moving vehicle with the ground. Other examples of devices which use the wheel and axle are capstans, belt drives and gears.

The earliest well-dated depiction of a wheeled vehicle (a wagon—four wheels, two axles) is on the Bronocice pot, a ca. 3635–3370 BCE ceramic vase, excavated in a Funnelbeaker culture settlement in southern Poland.

The oldest known example of a wooden wheel and its axle was found in 2002 at the Ljubljana Marshes some 20 km south of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. According to radiocarbon dating, it is between 5,100 and 5,350 years old. The wheel was made of ash and oak and had a radius of 70 cm and the axle is 120 cm long and made of oak.

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Wikipedia