A useful cheat for workshop calcs

[BeaverNZ]

When I was at school I was the the oridginal dummy when it came to maths especailly when it came to stuff like algerba, But once I got to do trade related calcs gear ratios etc suddenly it all started to make sense as I had something to relate to eg a 50t sprocket driving a 200t sprocket 200div by 50 equals 4 but when a part of an equation is missing I could never remember what to multiply and what to divide and when doing my advanced trade certificate where there was some fairly heavy calcs to do I came up with the thing below and using something where you know all the parts 1/2=point5. One divided by point5 equals two and two multiplied by point5 equals one. 

So to find X in the next picture two multiplied by point 5 equals X or 1

Or to find A  one divided by point 5 equals a or two

All you have to do is plug in what ever numbers you are working with and you will get your answer

Hope this makes sense it was a big help for Me and still is today Cheers Beaver

[BeaverNZ]

I have just done some calcs that would be typical to use on this site

Say you are building a press and had a 6 inch dia ram and wanted 50 tonnes from it

A 6 inch ram PI R sq 3x3x3.142 =28.278 sq inches piston area

Convert tons to pounds is 50x2240=112000 lb

so now to work out the pressure req we need to find P

112000 div by 28.278 = 3960.68psi

[BeaverNZ]

I stuffed up writing out the calculation, it should of been written like this but the answer was correct P was the answer all along

[Reeltree]

that just made my head ache

[Judson Yaggy]

Good stuff Beevs, I totally agree with your premise.  They tried to teach me trigonometry in high school and I said to myself  "When am I ever going to use this?"  I passed the class but not by much.  A few years later I built my first house with a gable dormer on the roof.  Suddenly it clicked, all that math had a real world application.  In college the professors hammered the point home, math is the real language of the world.  Design something, machine something, build or fabricate something, if you can do the math to model it or figure it out quicker than the competition, you win. 

If anyone out there wants to make money building a spiral stair, open a calculus textbook and think about curves.