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They certainly should’ve; it’s just a consequence of how pressure is force divided by area.

Here’s an analogy that might make it feel less weird: you know how you can reduce the force needed to lift a heavy weight by using a lever and making the lever arm longer? This is the same kinda deal, except that instead of varying the length of the lever arm you’re varying the diameter of the hydraulic pistons.

You don’t get it for free, of course: just like how you have to push the long end of the lever a longer distance to lift the weight a shorter distance, in a hydraulic system you have to press the plunger further down the small-diameter piston to move the plunger in the large-diameter piston up a smaller amount.

(I thought of mentioning pulley systems as an analogy too, but of these three varieties of gaining mechanical advantage I find pulley systems to be the most confusing, LOL.)

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Tja@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Another example: gears. You have a small wheel moving a large wheel trading speed for torque (or vice versa).

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kopasz7@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
No, you’re right, pulleys are mechanical witchcraft, I tell you!

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Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Archimedes over here with his bigass lever

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- FooBarrington@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Love his famous quote:
  
  If you give me a lever and a place to stand, I can move your mom.
  
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kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
A simple experiment to get an intuitive understanding of pulleys:

Take a piece of string and hold one end in your right hand, then hold your left hand higher and let the string run over it and hang down.

Now as you move your right hand up or down, the free end will move the same distance. But if you move your left hand up or down, the free end must move twice the distance, because you have string on either side of the hand that must both move that distance. So you are amplifying the movement, getting twice the movement at half the force.

If instead you wanted to amplify the force, as in a pulley, then stand on the free end of the string (so it’s no longer free) and pull down with your right hand. You are now amplifying the force exerted on your left hand, because it moves only half the distance of the right, so you get double the force. And this is exactly how a pulley works. Add more loops to get even more force at the cost of even more movement.

I figured this out while playing with the cats, and it made pulleys just make sense. Hopefully it can do the same for someone else :)

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