Remember being taught about the six simple machines? Like the wedge, the inclined plane, the screw? We were taught about them in elementary school, probably around age 10.
So perhaps my memory fails in the reddening light of early middle age: Where’s my hammer? On the list, I mean? The one you use to hit things with.
My wife points out she thinks it’s a “tool” not a “machine”. Shyeah, right, and a ramp is a machine how? Because you do so much with it?
If a ramp is a machine for moving mass against an energy gradient, then dammit a hammer is a machine for increasing the impulse applied to a fixed object. Or something like that.