RV-Recreation Vehicle Motorbike Ferris wheel Bullet train Trolley car Hydrofoil Light aircraft Ocean liner Funicular Hovercraft Airbus Bicycle Boat Bus Canoe Car ACTION Contents GRAVITY AIR PRESSURE WING SHAPE GEARS buoyancy CENTer OF GRAVITY LEVER COMBUSTION ENGINE aluminum FRICTION WHEEL AND AXLE streamlining rails DRAG PROPELLERS AZIMUTH POD 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34
3 Scooter Segway Cable car Subway Glossary Index Credits GYROSCOPE SENSORS PULLEY ELECTRIC motor Lots of different kinds of machines are used to help people travel from one place to another And these machines operate on land sea and in the air They may carry just a single person on a motorcycle or thousands of people on an ocean liner Travel machines do a lot of work Work is what happens when a force moves something And to do this work machines need energy This may be electrical energy or chemical energy from fossil fuels such as gasoline And energy provides power This power can be small enough to paddle a boat or massive enough to move a huge airplane Now let’s look at some of the action machines that help us travel from place to place and the science that makes this possible 36 38 40 42 44 46 48
ACTION Funicular Sometimes a cliff face is just too steep to climb easily So engineers developed a special kind of railway to take passengers up and down It’s called a funicular A funicular is a kind of cable railway The cable is attached to two cars that run on rails and to a pulley The cars look a little like trolleys The cable moves the cars up and down the steep slope As one goes up the other one going down counterbalances it This means that its weight as it is lowered is equal to the weight of the vehicle going up It balances its weight This makes the vehicle going up easier to pull At the top of the slope the cable runs through a pulley system The pulley system is usually turned by an electric motor Special wheels guide the cable from the pulley mechanism to the cars and back again 4What is the name of the force that pulls on the funicular
5 Although funiculars usually use electric power to move the cars up a steep slope gravity is also helping Gravity is a force that pulls on things It is the pulling power of Earth that holds everything on or close to the planet and stops things from jumping off and floating away including you ANSWER GRAVITY The pull of gravity between two things depends on the distance between them It also depends on how much stuff called mass they are made up of The greater their mass the greater the force of gravity that will pull on them The amount of gravity pulling on something is called its weight We measure weight in units called newtons So it’s the force of gravity that pulls the downward travelling car down And it’s the same force that helps pull the other car up
