Lever Classes for Dummies

Not a farmer; not pushing down

As our researchers troll the murky waters of the worldwide web looking for outright stupidity, they've noticed that sometimes the ignorance of the freelance writer is right up front in big, bold letters. Other times, their idiocy is more subtle; the kind of clue that requires careful reading. We regret that due to time constraints, the staff can't always catch those little errors... but every once in a while, one hits you in the face like a wet flounder. That's what's happened today, thanks to eHow.com contributor Tonya Yirka, who got caught pretending knowledge she didn't have in "What Are the Different Classes of Levers?" at Sciencing.com.

All you have to do to get that information is enter the title into Google: we got 437,000 results in 0.56 seconds. So it's not as if this is top-secret information, especially since fifth-graders learn all about simple machines. So let's see what Tonya has to say:

"Used for centuries, levers are still considered the easiest ways to lift heavy loads. Of the five types of simple machines, levers use the basic principles of force, pivot and load. Force is the effort put forth. The pivot or fulcrum supports the action. The load is the weight. Levers, used alone and in combination with other levers or simple machines, comprise many common items used everyday such as scissors, pencils and bottle openers."

Ugh. This is obviously from the early days of eHow, when they hadn't tightened up the style standards (the Wayback Machine says no later than 2010). Whatever the case, Yirka's introduction is... not the best writing... but more or less gets the point across. Tonya then goes on to explain the three classes of levers, telling us along the way that "A Class 1 lever magnifies force or distance, and can change direction." Duh! class I levers always change direction: the load's movement is opposite the direction of the force. But there is, of course, more: "The Class 2 levers have the load in the middle with the force and fulcrum on either end. To demonstrate this lever, think of a wheelbarrow. The farmer's pushing down on the handles represents the effort or force, the wheel the fulcrum and the stuff in the wheelbarrow the load..."

Based on that, we suspect Tonya has never used a wheelbarrow; maybe never even seen one! Not only are they used by more than just farmers, no one would use the tool by "pushing down on the handles"! Yirka more or less gets Class III levers right, though her description of how a rod and reel works as a lever seems a little fishy.

All in all, Yirka does a lousy job of describing the three classes of levers. Given the vast resources on the internet, much of it written at a grade-school level, we find it amazing that she can make such errors (less amazing that eHow.com let her publish them, sadly). For that, we hereby award Tonya Yirka the Antisocial Network's Dumbass of the Day (her second).

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