How can the mechanical advantage of an inclined plane, or ramp, be increased?

Question

How can the mechanical advantage of an inclined plane, or ramp, be increased?

 A. 

by making the ramp shorter

 B. 

by making the ramp steeper

 C. 

by making the ramp longer

 D. 

all of these

Answer 1

Well this answer is pretty straight forward.

Imagine you need to push a wheel chair up to a building which has a door 10ft above the sidewalk. If you make the plane shorter, you must make it steeper as it needs to go up to 10ft in the air in a very short distance. This means you would essentially be pushing the chair up almost vertically. Since this is not an easy way to gain an advantage (unless you call pushing something up an almost vertical wall easy), this eliminates options A&B and by default also D, therefore your answer is...

C