Inclined Plane

Hello. My name is the Inclined Plane, but my friends call me Ramp. You might know me as a slide at the playground. I am a flat surface that is tilted. I go up, up, up on one side and down, down, down on the other. I am like a little hill you can walk on. My job is to make it easier to move things. Pushing something heavy up a tall step is very hard. But pushing it up my gentle slope is so much easier. It is my special trick to make hard work feel a little lighter. I am a super helper.

I have been helping for a very, very long time. I am so old that no one person invented me. Smart people discovered me a long, long time ago. In a sunny land called Egypt, people built giant pyramids around the year 2500 BCE. That is older than anyone you know. They had to move huge, heavy stones to build the pyramids tall. The stones were too heavy to lift straight up. So, they built me. I was a very long ramp made of sand and dirt. Workers pushed the giant stones up, up, up my back. With a big push, they moved the stones higher and higher. I was so proud to help them build something so amazing. It was a very big job, and I was a very important helper.

Even though I am very old, you can still find me everywhere today. When you go down a slide at the park, whee. That is me, helping you have fun. You can see me helping people in wheelchairs go into stores and schools. That is me, making sure everyone can go where they need to go. Big trucks use me to load and unload heavy boxes. I make their job much easier. I am just a simple tilted shape, but I am one of the best helpers in the world. I show everyone that a simple idea can be a big help.