Strength from weakness

After talking to some family friends over easter, the conversation went onto their elderly parents and how her mother is too weak now to cut vegetables in her kitchen. Her mother desperately loves cooking and feels very restricted by her weakness.

In my last post I came to the conclusion that an enemy was 'A thing that harms or weakens something else'

So could this ladys old age be an enemy? and could I design an weapon against her old age to help her with weakness....

My brief for myself was: design an object/installation that uses the bare minimum of physical input from the user to initiate a series of mechanical events to gain an advantage in a conflict

This got me thinking that I could design a product which uses the

bare minimum of physical input from the user to initiate a series of mechanical events which c

uts vegetables and other food items.

The reason that she finds the knife difficult to use is that the knife does not have great mechanical advantage. There are several ways of increasing the mechanical advantage using the equation:

M = Fd

The knife works on a pivot mechanism and the force applied (at end points of the lever) is proportional to the ratio of the length of the lever arm measured between the fulcrum (pivoting point) and application point of the force applied at each end of the lever.

Therefore a really long knife handle theoretically provided it was anchored at the tip by a pivot would effectively gear the mechanism and make the process of cutting vegetables far less physically difficult. A traditional paper guillotine enables the exertion of the user to be far less however the distance the user has to move the handle is larger. Similar to how when you change a gear on a bike to make it easier you have to pedal further for the same distance. Making a mechanism which reloads itself (ie handle raises back up) would be a better option but would require an additional energy source such as stored energy in the form of a battery ---> motor or a wound spring. The human element could be just a very small easy triggering movement and remove the physical aspect all together.