Maggie's Farm

Why is a wheelbarrow load of soil or firewood easier to move around than a wagon load?

It's not spring yet, but I recently had a discussion about this subject, which led to some minor research. Like simple devices like the nutcracker, the human arm, scales, a see-saw, the crowbar, ratchet wrench, scissors, catapults, and the fishing rod, a wheelbarrow is a lever. In fact, a Type 2 Lever.

By a miracle of physics, levers magnify the force that can be applied with a given amount of effort. Archimedes was the first to attempt to describe the principles of levers. As the physics limerick goes:

One morning while eating my Wheaties,
I felt the earth move 'neath my feeties.
The cause for alarm
Was a long lever-arm,
At the end of which grinned Archimedes.

So, using by using your body to apply effort, with lever action, you are magically carrying a fair amount of the load of the wheelbarrow. A wagon offers no such advantage. (I will spare you the math with the factors of friction, torque, vectors, etc. that make a seemingly simple tool like a wheelbarrow surprising challenging to define.)

(As an aside, let me ask whether they let kids nowadays graduate from high school and college without taking calculus, physics and statistics? If so, wrong, wrong, wrong. This stuff is BASIC. An educated person knows Latin or Greek, calculus, basic physics, basic chemistry, and statistics. Or they are only half-educated about reality and seriously handicapped in the tools for understanding this world. Saddest thing: you forget it all, over time, but, like bike-riding, it's in there somewhere, and the brain can re-connect with it with the right "links".)

I am partial to two-wheelers. The increase in friction, I feel, is compensated by the lack of wobble (torque). Photo is the Ultimate Wheelbarrow from Cariola.