Tool for combining forces/couples and reducing to a wrench

[NattyBumppo]

This might be of interesting to beginning mechanical engineering students.

If you're familiar with equivalent systems of forces and couples, any system can be reduced into a single force and single couple that's parallel to the force--a.k.a. a "wrench." I made a 3D visualization for reducing a system of forces into a wrench. Please feel free to check it out and use it to help you learn about how to reduce systems:

http://engineering.beforebreakfast.net/wrenchmaker/

I shared this tool with my statics class, and I heard that it helped some people prepare for tests in the class, so I hope that you enjoy using it as well. Also, if you have any suggestions for how the tool might be improved, please let me know.

(This tool requires WebGL, an in-browser 3D framework which can be a bit tough to get running on certain browsers and certain computers. If after some Googling you still can’t figure out how to get it running, leave a comment here and I’ll try to help you get going.)

 

[Achy47]

Hello! Thank you for sharing this tool with us. I can definitely see the value in using visual aids to help understand and solve complex concepts like equivalent systems of forces and couples. I think this will be a great resource for beginning mechanical engineering students to use in their studies.

I also appreciate your offer to help with any technical difficulties in accessing the tool. It's great to see someone so willing to support and improve the learning experience for others. Perhaps, in the future, you could consider adding more interactive features or examples to the tool to make it even more helpful for students.

Once again, thank you for sharing this valuable resource and for your dedication to helping others learn and understand these important concepts in engineering. Keep up the great work!