Originally Posted By: paul
heres a pretty good one , if someone sits on it
there weight is divided equally between the 4 legs.


Here all the forces are in the same direction.

It does indeed work when they're all in the same direction.

In fact you can see the legs are sloping a bit. Would you say the total vertical force on the floor is _less_ than the weight of somebody sitting on it? Because some of the force must be transmitted outward, right?