Moment Scale

prusaprinters

This set of parts has been created to help students understand moments and the maths behind balancing them. In the UK students will usually come across moment for the first time in A-Level Mechanics. Or at university when studying courses such as Engineering. Even without taking part in this study this is a very useful concept to understand and will come up in life nearly on a daily basis in some shape or form. The scales can be used along with the various weights to prove that the force created around a point does equal the mass of the weight of the object multiplied by the distance from the pivot point. As a follow up to this demonstration it is very easy to show it is very easy to open a door pushing by the handle but much harder to push by the hinge. Hopefully using this students will be able to balance increasingly complex combinations of moments and weights by calculating a solution then putting the weights on the other side to see if they were correct. This can also be used for students who are much younger either helping with basic multiplication or helping with understanding balancing. The scale has been designed to intentionally be top heavy when the correct way up, this helps the scale be responsive enough to the single unit weight to tip when off balance. But it is stable enough to sit when balanced. I believe strongly that mathematical concepts are much easy to understand when it is demonstrated with something the student can touch and feel. Once they have the grasp in the real world they will be able to answer questions on paper truly understanding what it is that they are doing. Print instructionsAll parts should be printed with their largest flat face down, hopefully it is fairly obvious which is the best to print on the base. There are two options for the scales, one allows for printers that do not have multi material capability (Scale). However if you do not have multi material print the single colour file. For the provided print file the main body is in block two and the numbers are in block one. For the weights these should be printed number face up and 100% infill (otherwise they wont weight the correct proportions to each other). I have provided print files for 8 of each weight.