User talk:Prof McCarthy/mechanicaladvantage

Thanks for the opportunity to review your draft of this article. I am in the process of suggesting some changes. You will see them by selecting the View history tab and double-clicking on my edits, either individually or by selecting all of them together.

Some of your text uses a conversational style that is most appropriate in lecture notes or a textbook but is not considered appropriate in an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not a textbook or guidebook. See WP:NOTGUIDE, item 6 which says Wikipedia is not:

Textbooks and annotated texts. Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not a textbook. The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts, not to teach subject matter. It is not appropriate to create or edit articles that read as textbooks, with leading questions and systematic problem solutions as examples.

For example, your draft contained the following:

• Consider a gear train ...
• So we have ...
• In fact, ...
• For example, consider ...
• Thus, ...
• Therefore, ...

I have tried to eliminate most of these conversational expressions and make the prose look more like the encyclopedic style preferred at Wikipedia.

On a technical note, your section on levers is presented from the perspective of levers that rotate, and invokes the notion that input power (or work) must equal output power (or work). Its explanation matches the explanation used for gears. As you know, many levers don't rotate, so the notion of work and power is not applicable. You might find it attractive to present the section on levers using the principle of moments, and showing that the law of the lever is not restricted to levers that rotate.

Once you have reviewed my suggested changes you are free to revert all of it, or those bits you disagree with, or find unattractive. Keep up the good work. Dolphin (t) 03:33, 7 July 2011 (UTC)