What is "works on"

Usage examples of "works on".

Naturally, I cannot state precisely how this gimmick works but I should imagine basically it works on the lines of a distorting mirror.

He has left thirty-nine vast works on profane, ecclesiastical, and monastic history.

Although many statements may be found in works on natural history to this effect, I cannot find even one which seems to me of any weight.

From his muscular build and his tan, she guesses that he works on a building site.

A hundred different shiggies a year, which is something a young man can achieve without doing more than taking off his clothes, fulfils neither of the essential biological requirements of the sexual urge: it doesn't lead to a stable environment for the cubs of the next generation, nor does it establish the kind of rapport between couples (or multiples - marriage works on all kinds of bases, not invariably monogamous) which serves to avert crisis over the possession of other members of the species.

We have seen how it is originally language which works on the construction of concepts, a labor taken over in later ages by science.

But I read somewhere that the stuff only works on one particular family of fevers.

A heat engine of any sort works on pretty basic thermodynamics, and its diagrams are apt to resemble those of its relatives whether it's a steam turbine or a thermocouple.