1. Ag Systems Tech 2 Standard 4 – objective 1
Explain the functions of equipment used in agriculture, including tillage equipment, planting equipment, application equipment, cutting equipment, and harvesting equipment.

2. The agricultural industry is becoming increasingly technology based.

3. Persons in agricultural Systems (mechanics) must have a basic understanding of science and technology principles.
The relationships between the technologies are what makes the world of Agriculture systems go around.

4. Earth science
Earth science deals with the environment in which plants and animals grow.
This includes the composition of the earth and the atmosphere.
Soil, water, and air are studied in Earth science.

5. Chemistry
Chemistry deals with the makeup of matter, which is made of elements.
92 natural elements have been discovered; 17 artificial elements have been developed in laboratories and named.
All substances on the earth are made of these elements arranged in different combinations.

6. Physical Science
Physical science is the study of the nonliving factors in our environment.
Application of physical science is very much a part of agricultural mechanics.
Modern machinery involves many areas of applied physical science.

7. Think about it.
Many of the principles used in agricultural mechanics fall into the area of physical science.
This includes matter and energy.
Matter and energy may or may not depend on each other.

8. What is energy? Energy is the ability to do work or cause change.
It is found in different forms, such as heat, chemical, light, and movement.

9. EXAMPLES Batteries use chemical energy.
Engines use heat energy.
Batteries use chemical energy.
Lasers make use of light energy.
Movement, called mechanical energy, is seen when a wheel on a tractor or an agriculture power unit moves.

10. Machines and People
A machine is a device that does work. People appreciate machines because they save time and human energy.
Machines are a basic part of our heritage.

11. Machines in Agriculture
The development of agricultural implements has not only made work easier for the farmer, but advanced technology continues to make the machines more efficient.

12. A few doing so much for so many!
The overall number of farmers has decreased over the years. Approximately 85% of our population were ranchers and farmers when our nation was formed. Today, only 1-2% of the population is in production agriculture, growing the food and fiber for everyone.

13. Creative fixes
The human innate genius for invention and tinkering has resulted in the creation of many machines.
Thus, machines have turned peoples dreams into reality. Almost everything people do depends, in some way, on machines simple or complex.

14. What does it mean?
The word “machine” itself is derived from the Greek mechane and the Latin machina. Both loosely translated mean .an ingenious device or invention..

15. What is the simplest machine?
A machine is any device that provides a mechanical advantage. That is, it allows a small force (the effort) to move a larger force (the load).

16. Henry Ford II
But machines mean much more to us than just easing our daily burden. The really significant thing about a machine is not that it allows a man to do a given job in half the time, but that it can also allow a man to produce twice as much in a given time..

17. 6 kinds of Simple Machines
Regardless of the complexity of the machinery, all of the parts of agricultural machinery consist of variations of the six kinds of simple machines.
There are six simple machines from which complex machines are made

18. Remember the simple machines?
Lever, inclined plane, wedge, screw, pulley, and wheel and axle.
The following slide show examples of simple machines.

19. 6 Simple machines: Inclined Plane Screw. Wedge. Lever. Wheel and axle.
Pulley.

20. Way old
Modern humans started to cultivate crops only 10,000 years ago.
Simple tools like sticks and stones were used from the beginning of agricultural history, but some 5,000 years ago during the Bronze Age humans started manufacturing metal tools.

21. Nowadays, with the advances of technology , simple machines such as plows, seed drills and sprayers have drastically improved. However, the early versions of these tools are still used in some parts of the world.

22. Plow
The plow is the most important agricultural machine since the beginning of history, according to the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." This simple machine is used to turn and break up soil, helping to control weeds and burying crop residues.

23. The earliest plows were simply digging sticks with handles
The earliest plows were simply digging sticks with handles. The Romans used oxen to draw wheel-less plows with iron blades.
Although these rudimentary plows could break up Mediterranean topsoil, they were not suitable for the heavy soils of other European regions. Later, horses were substituted for oxen.

24. The Plow
Any real changes?

25. Plowing in action Plowing
How many simple or complex machines can you find shown in this clip?
Plowing

26. Forage harvest
Any real changes?

27.  Kansas City Hay Press Company in Kansas City, Missouri 

29. Harvesting hay
Any difference today?

31. Baling hay in action
How many simple or complex machines can you find shown in these clips?

32. Seed Drill
A seed drill is a machine that allows the even distribution of seeds into a channel previously carved in the soil with a metal plough. Before the Englishman Jethro Tull invented this simple yet revolutionary machine, in the early 16th century, seeds were distributed in the soil by hand.

34. A Planter explained
How many simple or complex machines can you find shown in this clip?
A Corn Planter

35. What is a tractor?
The word "tractor" is related to words like "traction" and "tractive," from the Latin word "tractus" meaning drawing (pulling): a tractor is essentially a machine designed to pull things along.

36. Tractors have large and powerful diesel engines and, in theory, that means they should be able to go incredibly fast, just like sports cars.
But in a tractor, the engine's power is designed to be used in an entirely different way: for pulling heavy loads.

37. What makes this possible is the tractor's gearbox, which converts the high-speed revolutions of the diesel engine into much lower-speed revolutions of the wheels, increasing the force the tractor can use for pulling things at the same time.
If you know anything about gears, you'll realize that a tractor's incredible pulling power must come at the expense of speed:

38. Way back when
Tractors were originally designed to replace working animals such as oxen and horses, which people have been using to pull carts and plows since ancient times. One of the pioneers of modern tractors, Henry Ford, got at least part of his inspiration from a simple determination to come up with something better than the horse for doing heavy farm work.

39. Before tractors came along, horses made life much easier for farmers, but all they could really do was pull things.
Early tractors were merely replacements for horses, pulling things was pretty much all they could do.
Those early tractors were fueled by coal and known as steam traction engines.

40. STEAM POWER
They looked like small steam locomotives, with large, sturdy metal wheels capable of rolling down roads, and they first appeared toward the end of the 19th century.

41. Many developments
Modern tractors are much more sophisticated than traction engines and they can do all kinds of things, thanks to some really useful features.

42. Parts of a tractor

43. Drawbar
Tractors pull implements (farm machines such as plows, trailers, hay balers, manure spreaders, and so on) using a sturdy steel bar called a drawbar, which makes a secure but very flexible link between the tractor and whatever is following it. The drawbar can pivot so a tractor can easily pull its load around corners.

44. Hydraulic lift hitch
Modern tractors use a hydraulically powered lifting system at the back.
This can raise and lower implements off the ground with a flick of a switch.
The hitch makes it easy for a tractor to lower a plow when it is working on a field, and then raise it up again to drive it somewhere else.

45. Power takeoff
A rotating shaft, usually at the back of a tractor, from which engine power can be used power equipment.

46. Using the PTO
By hooking up a special spinning rod (with flexible connections called universal joints) between the tractor and the implement. called the PTO shaft.

47. Tires
The most noticeable thing about a tractor are its giant wheels and tires. Large pneumatic (air filled) tires spread the weight of the tractor over a larger area and deep treads give excellent grip.

48. Diesel engines
Tractors are generally powered by large diesel engines, which are particularly good at providing high pulling power at very low speeds (that's why they're used in trucks and buses). Smaller tractors may have gasoline engines 

49. Although tractors could never be described as luxurious, most now have heated cabs, air conditioning, and a few are fitted with GPS satellite navigation to help work the fields with precision.
It's all a far cry from working your fields with a horse and cart!

50. Tractor on the inside
How many simple or complex machines can you find shown in this clip?
Tractor innerds

51. Combine Harvesters
In 1800, something like 90 percent of the entire US population was employed working the land; fast-forward 200 years and you'll find only 2 percent of people are now working this way. What caused that amazing change in society?

52. One important factor was the development of huge, automated machines such as combine harvesters that made each agricultural worker vastly more productive. Let's take a closer look at how they work!

53. The crops we grow in our fields, such as wheat, barley, and rye, are only partly edible. We can use the seeds at the top of each plant (known as the grain) to make products like bread and cereal, but the rest of the plant (the chaff) is inedible and has to be discarded.

54. Before modern-day machines were developed, agricultural workers had to harvest crops by carrying out a series of laborious operations one after another. First they had to cut down the plants with a long-handled cutting tool such as a scythe.

55. Next, they had to separate the edible grain from the inedible chaff by beating the cut stalks—an operation known as threshing.
Finally, they had to clean any remaining debris away from the seeds to make them suitable for use in a mill. All this took a lot of time and a lot of people.

56. Thankfully, modern combine harvesters do the whole job automatically: you simply drive them through a field of growing crops and they cut, thresh, and clean the grains all by themselves using rotating blades, wheels, sieves, and elevators. The grain collects in a tank inside the combine harvester (which is periodically emptied into trucks to haul the grain to storage) and the chaff and straw goes out the back of the machine .

57. There's an awful lot going on inside a combine harvester.
There are gears, blades, augers (screws that move materials), conveyors, belts, levers, and wheels.

58. A combine harvester explained
How many simple or complex machines can you find shown in this clip?
Combine Harvester

59. How many simple or complex machines can you find shown in this clip?
INSIDE the combine
How many simple or complex machines can you find shown in this clip?
Combine Harvester
On the inside

60. Sprayers
A sprayer is a piece of equipment used to spread liquid herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers on crops.
Sprayers vary widely in size, from backpack units to self-propelled machines of a tractor's size.

61. Spraying:
Any Changes in spraying technology?

62. Innovative technology at work
On Target spray systems utilize the natural power of attraction. Our sprayers feature a spray nozzle that uses an electrical charge to create a fine mist of uniform, electrostatic droplets.
Since all the droplets have the same charge, they repel each other, creating a fine spray mist less prone to runoff.

63. The opposite charges of the plant attract the particles to it, drawing the spray deep inside the plant's canopy. Once the plant is fully and evenly covered in spray, the surface charges even out, resulting in complete, uniform coverage.
LIKE POWDER COAT PAINTING

64. Rube Goldberg Machines
Rube Goldberg machines are usually a complicated combination of simple machines.
By studying the components of Rube Goldberg machines, we learn more about simple machines

65. Safety Device for Walking on Icy Pavements
When you slip on ice, your foot kicks paddle (A),
lowering finger (B), snapping turtle (C) extends neck
to bite finger, opening ice tongs (D) and dropping pillow (E),
thus allowing you to fall on something soft.

66. Do the “invent your own machine” exercise.