Write a moving day in which every heavy thing goes up a ramp and one thing rolls back down.Angle: nobody is hurt, and one thing ends up in the hedge.
A marble, a toy car and a wooden block start down the same tilted book. Write the race and the excuses.Angle: the block has the best excuse.
Write the oldest pulley anyone knows of, at work in ancient Egypt, as the rope that ran over it.Fact: the earliest evidence of pulleys is from ancient Egypt, between 1991 and 1802 BC, and from Mesopotamia.
A balance scale at a market weighs apples against iron weights all day. Write the scale's opinion of both.Fact: a balance scale is a lever with its pivot between the two sides.
A bottle opener meets a cap that will not come off. Write three seconds of the struggle, slowed down.Fact: a bottle opener is a lever of the same class as a wheelbarrow and a nutcracker.
A claw hammer pulls out a nail that would not budge for bare fingers. Write the nail's side of it.Fact: a claw hammer pulling a nail is a lever with its pivot between the effort and the load.
A crowbar is the oldest tool in the shed and has opinions about the new power drill. Write them.Fact: a crowbar is a lever, in the same class as a seesaw.
A fishing rod, a pair of tweezers and a pair of tongs argue over which is the most useful lever in the house. Write the argument.Fact: in all three the effort goes in between the pivot and the load.
A nutcracker waits all year for one week of work. Write its speech on the first night.Fact: in a nutcracker the load, the nut, sits between the pivot and the hand.
A pair of scissors keeps a diary. Write the entry for the day it met thick cardboard.Fact: a pair of scissors is a lever. Its pivot sits between the hand and the cut.
A wheelbarrow carries a load its gardener could never lift alone. Write the wheelbarrow's boast.Fact: a wheelbarrow is a lever with its load between the pivot and the effort.
Explain to a five-year-old how a long handle makes a job easier. Use no word longer than six letters.Fact: the farther from the pivot you push, the more a lever multiplies the push.
The handle of a spoon pries the lid off a stuck tin. Write what the spoon thinks of its new job.Angle: it was a spoon this morning and it is a lever now.
Hunt through your kitchen for levers and write the report of the first five you catch.Fact: scissors, pliers, a bottle opener and a nutcracker are all levers.
Someone long ago said that with a lever and a place to stand, they could move the world. Write the day they try.Fact: the saying is credited to a Greek mathematician of the third century BC.
Workers in ancient Egypt raise a stone pillar heavier than anything you have seen, using levers. Write it as the youngest worker.Fact: in ancient Egypt, workmen used the lever to move and raise obelisks weighing more than 100 tons.
Write a list poem: seven things I moved today with a lever and never noticed.Angle: start at breakfast and stop at bedtime.
Your own jaw is on the list of levers. Write lunch as the jaw tells it.Fact: the lower jaw of the human skull is listed among levers, with tweezers and a fishing rod.
A ramp 15
A cable car is pulled up a steep hillside track every day. Write one ride as a passenger who fears heights and loves the view.Fact: in a funicular, a railroad car is pulled up a steep inclined plane by cables.
A family carries a piano up three steps, gives up and fetches a plank. Write what changes.Fact: a ramp is an inclined plane, a tilted surface used to raise or lower a load.
A heavy trunk must reach the attic by the short steep stairs or by a ramp three times as long. Write your choice and your regrets.Angle: the easy way is the long way.
A long gentle ramp and a short steep one lead to the same door. Write their argument over which is the easy way.Fact: the gentler the slope of a ramp, the smaller the force needed to raise a given weight.
A marble, a toy car and a wooden block start down the same tilted book. Write the race and the excuses.Angle: the block has the best excuse.
A road winds up a mountain instead of going straight to the top. Write the road's reasons.Fact: roads use gradual slopes so that vehicles can get over hills.
A wheelchair ramp is added to the front of an old library. Write the building's first day with it.Fact: a wheelchair ramp lets a person in a wheelchair get over an obstacle within their own strength.
An airliner's evacuation slide has been folded away for years. Write the day of the practice drill.Fact: evacuation slides let people reach the ground quickly and safely from the height of an airliner.
An escalator has carried the same commuters for twenty years. Write what it knows about them.Fact: escalators and slanted conveyor belts are forms of the inclined plane.
Ancient sailors drag their ship overland on a paved ramp to save a long voyage. Write the crossing as the ship.Fact: the ancient Greeks built a paved ramp 3.7 miles long to drag ships across the Isthmus of Corinth.
Builders long ago move a huge stone uphill on a ramp of earth. Write the day the stone reaches the top.Fact: the heavy stones of Stonehenge are believed to have been set in place using ramps made of earth.
For centuries the ramp was left off the list of simple machines. Write its letter of complaint.Fact: the Greek thinkers who defined the other five simple machines did not count the inclined plane.
The ramps of a skate park talk after closing time about the best trick they felt all day. Write the talk.Fact: skateboard parks, water slides and ski slopes are inclined planes used for fun.
Write a moving day in which every heavy thing goes up a ramp and one thing rolls back down.Angle: nobody is hurt, and one thing ends up in the hedge.
Write the morning of a loading ramp at the back of a delivery truck, box by box.Fact: inclined planes are widely used as loading ramps for trucks, ships and planes.
A pulley 15
A bucket goes down a well on a rope over a pulley. Write the bucket's report from the bottom.Angle: dark, cold, and an echo that answers back.
A clothesline runs on two pulleys between a window and a pole. Write what crosses it in one week.Angle: one thing on the line belongs to nobody in the house.
A crane lifts a piano to a fourth-floor window. Write the crowd on the sidewalk.Angle: nothing is dropped. Who holds their breath longest?
A flag goes up a pole every morning when someone pulls down on a rope. Write the morning as the rope.Fact: a fixed pulley changes the direction of the force on a rope.
A long rope must be pulled a long way to lift a heavy thing a little. Write the complaint of the person pulling.Fact: a machine can raise the force on a load, at the cost of the load moving a shorter distance.
A movable pulley rides up with its load while a fixed one stays put. Write them as two coworkers, one who travels and one who never leaves.Fact: a fixed pulley's axle is held by a support. A movable pulley's axle sits in a block that moves.
A pulley can run a rope, a cable, a belt or a chain. Write its job interview with all four.Fact: the drive element of a pulley system can be a rope, a cable, a belt or a chain.
A sailor hauls up a heavy sail with a block and tackle. Write the haul, pull by pull.Fact: threading the rope through the pulleys multiplies the force put on the rope.
A single fixed pulley is tired of being thanked for making a load lighter, which it never did. Write its correction.Fact: a fixed pulley only turns a pull around. Force is gained by adding a movable pulley.
A stagehand raises and lowers the scenery of a play on ropes and pulleys. Write opening night from above the stage.Angle: the audience never looks up.
A window blind goes up and down on a cord. Write the blind's view of one family's day.Angle: it sees the street and the room, and reports on both.
Design in words a pulley system to lift your sleeping cat to a sunny shelf without waking it.Angle: say how many pulleys, and who pulls.
Kids rig a pulley from a tree house to send snacks up in a basket. Write the first delivery and the first disaster.Angle: the disaster is a spilled drink and nothing worse.
Two pulleys share one rope and lift a crate neither could lift alone. Write their conversation.Fact: a block and tackle is two or more pulleys with a rope threaded between them, used to lift heavy loads.
Write the oldest pulley anyone knows of, at work in ancient Egypt, as the rope that ran over it.Fact: the earliest evidence of pulleys is from ancient Egypt, between 1991 and 1802 BC, and from Mesopotamia.
Six machines in one playground 15
A bicycle leans on the playground fence. Write the simple machines inside it gossiping about the swings.Fact: wheels, levers and pulleys are all used in the mechanism of a bicycle.
A new kid knows the names of all six simple machines and nobody on the playground cares, until the gate sticks. Write it.Angle: which machine opens the gate?
A screw holds the swing set together and never gets a turn on it. Write the screw's quiet pride.Fact: screws are widely used in threaded fasteners to hold objects together.
A spiral slide is a ramp wrapped round a pole. Write the trip down as a screw would describe it.Fact: a screw can be viewed as a narrow inclined plane wrapped around a cylinder.
Build a playground with only one kind of simple machine in it. Choose which, and write an afternoon there.Angle: what do the kids miss first?
Invent a new piece of playground equipment made of two simple machines joined together. Write the sign that explains it.Fact: simple machines are the building blocks of more complicated ones, called compound machines.
The playground at night: write six machines talking over the day, each sure it did the most work.Angle: the screw says the least and has the last word.
The pulley at the top of the playground flagpole has never been seen up close. Write the day it is lowered for oiling.Angle: it has a few things to say after all these years.
Some people call a seesaw a teeter-totter. Write two kids arguing over its name while riding it.Fact: in parts of North America a seesaw is also known as a teeter-totter.
Somewhere in the playground a wheel and its axle turn together. Find them and write their day.Fact: a wheel and axle is a wheel attached to a smaller axle so that the two rotate together.
Two kids of very different sizes want to balance on one seesaw. Write how they work out where each must sit.Fact: a seesaw is a lever, a beam on a pivot called a fulcrum.
Walk through a playground and find all six simple machines. Write the tour.Fact: the six classical simple machines are the lever, wheel and axle, pulley, inclined plane, wedge and screw.
Where is the wedge in a playground? Write a detective's search, ending at the last place anyone looked.Fact: a wedge is a portable inclined plane, and the tips of nails and forks are wedges.
Write a playground report card: one grade for each simple machine you found, with a teacher's comment.Angle: one of them could try harder.
Write the slide's opinion of the ladder, and the ladder's opinion of the slide.Fact: a playground slide is an example of the inclined plane.
How it works
A simple machines writing prompt starts with something you can put a hand on: a bottle opener, a plank, a flagpole rope. These simple machine writing prompts find all six machines in a house and a playground. Facts come from Wikipedia's article on each machine.
Read the full guide
Levers, ramps and pulleys around the house
The first three groups keep mostly close to home. A nutcracker gives a speech on its one week of work, a long gentle ramp and a short steep one argue over which is the easy way, and a clothesline on two pulleys carries a week of washing.
Six machines in one playground
The last group is a hunt. The seesaw is the lever and the slide is the inclined plane. The wheel and axle, the pulley and the screw take more finding, and one prompt sends a detective after the wedge.
Find the machine before you write. Name its pivot, its slope or its rope.
Let the machine talk. It has done the same job a thousand times and has opinions.
Questions and answers
What is a good simple machines writing prompt?
One with a machine you have used today. A pair of scissors keeps a diary: write the entry for the day it met thick cardboard. Or write a list poem of seven things you moved with a lever and never noticed.
Why is a ramp a simple machine?
A ramp is an inclined plane: a tilted surface that raises a load with less force over a longer distance. The gentler the slope, the smaller the force. The Greek thinkers who defined the other five simple machines still left it off their list.
Is a seesaw a simple machine?
Yes. A seesaw is a lever, a beam on a pivot called a fulcrum, with a rider on each side. In parts of North America it is called a teeter-totter, and one prompt has two kids argue over the name while riding it.