Matravers School cookery competition
the power of number 9 :: Article Creator The Power Of The Human Jaw ATEN-POUND bite requires a forty-pound contraction of the human jaw muscles. That is because the jaws are built on the principle of a pair of tongs, The power is applied near the joint, while the work is performed at the opposite extremity of the jaw levers. Had a mechanical engineer designed the human frame, he would no doubt have built the jaws after the fashion of a nut cracker, with the muscles placed at the ends of the jaw levers, and the teeth between these ends and the joint or fulcrum, so that a powerful bite could be obtained with a very small expenditure of muscular effort. However, in the physiology of man and all other animal life, for that matter, mechanical advantage weighs for little in the presence of other broader considerations. This is why nearly all the principal muscles of the body must be far more powerful than would be necessary were they to act directly upon ...