We found this piece of equipment near the Mosser road above Loweswater. I couldn't work out what it had been used for but it had a lovely example of a lever on the side.
You put a small effort into pulling the handle but it moves a much bigger load. So we say that it acts as a force multiplier. This is because each force exerts the same moment about the pivot. Moment = force x distance. There is a bigger distance to the effort so the force is smaller. How much smaller depends on the ratio of the distances. Without measuring precisely, I'd estimate that the distance from the pivot to the effort is about 8x the distance from the pivot to the load. So you'd use 8x less force to get the mechanism to move. We call this the mechanical advantage.
