Lift (force)

“ Having relaxed the legs and arms and head, next the spine and all the muscles of the chest must be helped to relax. This is more difficult, and requires not only care but greater muscular strength in the lifter. If the one who is lifting will only remember to press hard on the floor with the feet, and put all the effort of lifting in the legs, the strain will be greatly lessened.
Take hold of the hands and lift the patient or pupil to a sitting attitude. Here, of course, if the muscles that hold the head are perfectly relaxed, the head will drop back from its own weight. ”

“ This is always the heaviest moment of a lift of that sort, and the men made their dispositions accordingly. Short poles were first got under the bent, by thrusting the unarmed ends into the cavity of the foundation; and a few of the stoutest of the men stood on blocks, prepared to apply their strength directly. ”

“ Thus, when we say, lift, expand, and let go, we mean lift from the hips, the center of gravity, in an easy, flexible manner; expand the body with a free movement without conscious thought of any part of it; have the sensation of letting go all contraction or rigidity, and absolutely release the muscles of the throat and face. The let go is in reality more a negative than a positive condition, and virtually means, when you lift and expand, do not locally grip, harden, or set any muscle of the body, throat, or face. ”

“ There are no elevators on the planet I live on now — the wild gravity and wilder windstorms don't permit buildings of more than one story — but even if there were, they wouldn't be like this lift, like a human lift, like one of the fifty that ran the vertical length of the bat-house. ”

“ To children and young persons, light and suitable apparatus will furnish added stimulus and interest.
Climbing a ladder or rope, hand over hand, or lifting the body so that the chin may touch a horizontal bar overhead, are exercises better suited to later stages of biceps development. To be able to lift the body to the bar with one hand, three to five times, should satisfy any reasonable ambition. ”

“ The process of ‘backing up’ is excessively fatiguing, the thrust necessary to hold oneself firmly in situ being as a rule much greater than the equivalent of one’s weight, and the whole of this thrust being at every slight lift transmitted through the arms. ”

“ The motion upwards in such a case is rather slow; the leg that does the work must not be thrust too far into the recess, or else the business of balancing is awkward, and the lift at each ‘stroke’ is insufficient. 179 The unemployed foot, as the skater calls it, can often help by a momentary purchase on a minute ledge; even the width of an eighth of an inch will suffice to steady the lift. ”

“ There were tumbling exhibits of turning forward and backward on the hands, somersaulting off one another's shoulders, and even sometimes doing these feats while holding one foot with a hand. There were tests of strength wherein two men would sit back to back and each strive to rise first from the ground, and in another test they would try who could lift the heaviest weight or raise a bag of sand with a straight arm up over head. ”

“ This last division is only an imaginary one, as the real lift is the one to be studied and expresses the arc through which the impulse face of the tooth impels the balance during the act of escaping, and so, as we shall subsequently show, should no more be counted than in the detached lever escapement, where a precisely similar condition exists, but is never considered or discussed. ”

“ Look at the human arm: what engineer would have dared to fasten anything to such a movable base as that? Yet an arm can swing round like a windmill, and lift weights like the stoutest crane without being wrenched out of its sockets, because the muscles act as pulleys in four different directions. ”

“ Two hands so pressed against any sloping surfaces can lift the whole weight. Pressed against vertical surfaces—the inside walls of cracks, for instance, too narrow to admit the body—they are sufficient to retain the balance, while the feet find any slight hold, or even only friction holds, to supply propulsion. How good the foothold must be to complement such handholds is a matter of practice in compensations.
Push and press holds with the hands, combined with the twist and leverage of the arms, in combinations innumerable, are the refinements of exceptionally difficult climbing. ”

“ To lift the weight on a direct push is easier for many than to raise it by a long-arm pull. On push holds the weight of the body keeps the hands firmly in place; and a hold by thrusting friction, even if it be only on a rounded or sloping ledge, calls for less effort than to keep the same weight in suspension from the crook of a muscular finger round an ideal hold at the stretch of the arm. ”

“ In other words, so far as the balance of the forces is concerned, the whole amount of the downward motion consists of the smaller weight descending through a greater distance, which will be equal to the whole amount of that of the larger one ascending through a smaller distance; and, to produce a preponderance, the whole amount of the downward force must be somewhat greater. Thus the lever only gathers or concentrates force, as it were, but does not at all increase it. ”

“ We have a system of levers to do our walking with, and they act precisely as do all levers. One leg is a lever to pry the body over the other leg, and the latter becomes a pendulum and swings back by force of gravity. ”

“ The sempiternal lift, for one’s comings and goings, affects one at last as an almost intolerable symbol of the herded and driven state and of that malady of preference for gregarious ways, of insistence on gregarious ways only, by which the people about one seem ridden. ”

“ The grip climber, therefore, who puts half a dozen directions of strain upon each handhold in any one lifting movement, will make no progress at all on unsound holds. If he does not test them beforehand, in the end he will fall. If he tests them properly in all the directions that his lift will demand, he will remove most of the holds before he can use them. The balance climber, who has practised putting only that direction of strain upon a hold which his own next movement and the hold’s security agree upon, is in less of a quandary. ”

“ From day to day, as these muscles gain strength, A' is dropped lower and lower, until finally it is on a level with A. Or a strap may be placed over the forehead and fastened to A', and, with the feet in the toe-straps, the person may lift his body up till vertical, drawing the weight E with him as he rises. ”

“ When a lift of six feet was effected, the lifting chains were seized by a set of clamps, under the lowest point to which the cross-head descended, and while they were thus held suspended, the water was discharged from the great cylinder, and the ram, with its cross-head, made to descend. ”

“ There is a pretty dependable rule that if you can just manage to lift a weight with both hands, you can just about budge it with one hand. Tom had tried this at Temple Camp with a visiting scout's baggage chest. ”

“ Just as it takes four men to raise a load with a lever five feet long, and only two men to lift the same load with a ten-foot lever, so the longer the arms, the easier they are to draw, and the shorter, the harder. ”

“ The lift tackle is made by getting under the runner, or at least within reaching distance, pinning his knees together, and pulling his feet from under him, or, better, lifting him up and throwing him backwards. ”

“ If you take two pieces of chain capable of lifting a ton, and join them with a piece of rope capable of lifting five hundred pounds, your combination is only as strong as the rope, and will only lift the smaller weight. This is why shrouds so frequently give way ”

“ Ability to carry and lift or move is not so much dependent upon absolute strength as it is on knowing how. The whole body, so far as it is a physical mechanism, may be thought of as a series of levers, of which the muscles, bones, and joints make up the parts and are fulcrum, power arm or weight arm as the case may be. ”

“ This would not work in the hotel; because a lift has no habits. It is typical of the real tameness of machinery, that even when we talk of a man turning mechanically we only talk metaphorically; for it is something that a mechanism cannot do. ”

“ They climb ropes after the manner of sailors, and horizontal beams are raised at various heights from the ground, in which they learn to preserve a perfect equilibrium—sitting, moving along them by the hands, supporting the body, which is free to fall, and, finally, walking erect upon them like a rope-dancer without his balance-pole! ”

“ The advocates of the single supporting surface are probably mistaken. It is true that a single surface shows a greater lift per square foot than superposed surfaces for a given speed, but the increased weight due to leverage more than counterbalances this advantage by requiring heavy spars and some guys. ”

“ Mounting a ladder or a rope hand-over-hand; lifting any weight in front of you, whether a feather, or a child, or a barrel of sugar; picking up anything from the floor; holding weights out in front, or at your side, at arm's length; pulling downward on a rope, as in hauling up a sail; hammering—in short, anything which bends the elbow and draws the hand in towards the shoulder, takes the biceps muscle; and, if the work is vigorous and persisted in, this muscle will ere long become strong and well-shaped. ”

“ It has been estimated that, while an engine can lift its own weight three thousand feet in an hour, and an active climber can ascend four thousand feet, the human heart performs hourly a labor equal to lifting its own weight twenty thousand feet. ”

“ But if the rope had been so fixed, that the part to be broken had been short, it would have been broken with four times less difficulty.
9. I have seen him lift a rolling stone of about 800 lib. with his hand only, standing in a frame above it, and taking hold of a chain that was fastened to it. By this I reckon that he may be almost as strong again as those who are generally reckoned as the strongest men, they generally lifting no more than 400 lib. in that manner. The weakest men who are in health and not too fat, lift about 125 lib. having about half the strength of the strongest. ”

“ The feet are spread widely apart and each endeavors to draw, by the strength of the arms alone, the back of his opponent into a curve and thus bring him off his feet. Then with a lift he is quickly thrown flat on his back. ”

“ Then, fleawnd’rin’ low i’th gutter, he looks reawnd wi’ dismay, To see iv aught i’th world can give a lift on the way. A lift on the way; A lift on the way; To see iv aught i’th world can give a lift on the way. [67]
Oh, there’s some folk ’at mun trudge it, an’ there’s some folk ’at may ride, But, never mortal mon con tell what chance may betide; To-day, he may be blossomin’, like roses i’ May; To-morn, he may be beggin’ for a lift on the way. A lift on the way; A lift on the way; To-morn, he may be beggin’ for a lift on the way.
Good-will, it’s a jewel, where there’s little else to spare ”

“ The lift is not obtained by strength, but by knack and a good stick. Of course the more strength there is in the act of lifting the greater will be the velocity of the shot. But strength minus knack is not so successful as knack minus strength. ”

“ You can lift a ton with [23] an effort of only 100 pounds if your effort arm is twenty times as long as your weight arm but the end of your effort arm would have to move twenty inches to raise the ton weight one inch. We are assuming in all these cases that the lever itself has no weight and that there is no friction at the fulcrum.
Of course levers are not used merely for the purpose of lifting weight, but to overcome any resistance or merely to apply pressure upon an object. In almost every household we may find examples of the three orders of levers. ”

“ The health lift, as a gentle exercise, is rapidly becoming an institution of necessity to persons of sedentary habits, and brings into action, when properly used, as many muscles of the human frame as any other exercise, and yet consumes but a few moments of time daily, which of itself is an important item to brain-workers and industrious humanity generally. ”

“ An unsupported weight will fall, and even when supported will exert a pressure downward. And this tendency is no mere directed force in the physical sense, but an impulse, in the personal sense. For when with hand or shoulder we support a weight, we inevitably interpret it in terms of our own voluntary muscular exertion in resisting it; even as we strive to resist it, so it seems to strive to fall. Although this force is exerted downward, it shows itself in the horizontal lines of a building, in string courses, parapets, cornices, friezes ”

“ It is certain that continual exercise of the upper parts of the body by such means as the lifting of heavy substances tends to improve the chest and shoulders, and many of those who are engaged in lifting and carrying the plates and sole-bars are very stout and square in this respect. There is a number of “heavy weights,” and a few positive giants among them, though the majority of the men are conspicuous, not so much by their bulk, as by their squareness of limb and muscularity. A proof of the strength of the frame shed men may be seen in the success of their tug-of-war teams. ”

“ Hartelius, “is to have two thick vertically hanging ropes fixed to the ceiling, at two feet distance from each other, for all the members of the household to perform daily a hanging or trunk-lifting exercise. The hands grasp the ropes at equal heights above the head, and support, for a short moment, the whole weight of the body, either by simply hanging with straight arms or—if the person be sufficiently strong—by slowly bending the elbows, thus lifting the body. ”