Transcript Energy
Energy
Chapter 8: Physics Matters
(By James Trefil and Robert Hazen)
Some initial questions
What does it mean to do work?
Can you do a work out without ever actually doing any work?
Why is it dangerous to speed/tailgate when driving a car?
Other questions we will
eventually be able to answer!
Why does the roller coaster
work without a motor on the
car?
How come a ball never
bounces as high as it
was dropped?
Work
Work is done whenever a force is exerted on an object over a
distance
- It is the transfer of energy that results in
moving an object over a distance.
W F d
Work = Force x Distance
N
m
Newton-meters are known as “Joules” (J)
Work
How much work do you to to lift a 5 kg book from the floor onto a
table if the table is 3m high?
How far will you lift a 20N bag if you do 100 J of work on it?
Work and Energy
When you do work you transfer energy or use energy.
-Energy is a system’s ability to do work
-Since work is measured in Joules and work is a transfer of energy,
energy must also be measured in Joules.
There are many different forms of energy, what are they?
Is this Work?
Power
Power is the rate at which energy is used, or the rate at which
work is done.
- The faster energy is used or transferred, or the faster
work is done on an object, the more power that is
expended by the machine doing the work.
Energy Work W
Power
time
time
t
Power
For what everyday things do we tend to pay attention to power?
One major type of thing are the bulbs that light our rooms.
How do we differentiate between different types of bulbs?
Watts! Wattage is a unit of
measurement that tells us how much
energy the bulb will use in a certain
amount of time.
Power is measured in Watts (joules per second).
- So, a more powerful bulb will use stored
energy faster then a weaker bulb with the same
amount of stored energy.
Horsepower
The English system form of power was based on how much a
single horse can pull.
This was known as horsepower!
1 horsepower 746 Watts
A space shuttle has over 37 million
horsepower!
Power
How powerful is an elevator that can lift a mass of 400kg up a
building of height 100 m in 20 seconds?
Question
Lindsey wants to hike up this 400 m mountain and she has a mass
of 48 kg. If she takes the path that you see and hikes a distance of
620 m, how much work does she do against gravity to get up the
mountain?
Does Andi, who has the same mass as Lindsey, do more or less
work if instead of hiking, she rock climbs up a sheer cliff strait up to
the pinnacle?
Question Continued
Who is more powerful if Lindsey takes 3 hours to hike the path, but
Andi, being a professional rock climber (maybe I should have said
Maggie), takes only an hour to scale the cliff?
Hmmmmmm
When both Lindsey and Andi each reach the top of the mountain,
do they have any energy left?
Yes! But what type of energy to do they have?
Potential Energy
• Basically it is energy stored in a system
Both girls have what is called “Gravitational Potential Energy.”
•Since gravity could exert a force on either of them to make them
fall to the ground from the top of the mountain, there is potential
for work to be done on them, and hence, potential energy.
Gravitational Potential Energy:
PE mgh
Which is mass x acceleration due to gravity x height
Potential Energy
How much potential energy does each girl have?
Gravitational Potential Energy
• Independent of Path to get there
Kinetic Energy
If Philip is waiting at the top of the mountain to show Lindsey the
awesome new set of wings he built, and he has a mass of 55 kg, how
much potential energy does he have?
Can he convert his potential energy into
anything?
Yes! If he jumps off the cliff, gravity will do work
to pull him toward the ground, converting his
potential energy into kinetic energy.
Kinetic Energy
Kinetic Energy is the energy an object has because it is moving.
1 2
KE mv
2
It is similar to momentum as they both result from the movement of
masses, but they differ in the fact that KE is a scalar quantity.
Also, as velocity increase, momentum also increases linearly, but
KE increases as a squared function (if v goes up by 2, KE goes up
by 4)
Kinetic Energy
How much Kinetic Energy will Philip have as he hits the ground, if
he jumps of the mountain at the sheer cliff face, and his new wings
fail completely?
Notice any Coincidences?
Conservation of Energy
Just like with momentum, the total energy of a system is never
lost… It is conserved!
This means, that in the case of Philip jumping off a
mountain, he converted his Potential Energy at the top
of the mountain completely into Kinetic Energy by the
time he reached the ground.
If energy is always conserved, why wont our experiments always
work?
Conservation of Energy
If this cliff is 150 m high, and the person
in the picture has a mass of 65 kg, how
much PE does he have at the top of the
cliff? How much KE does he have at the
top of the cliff?
How much KE does he have as he hits
the water? How much PE does he have?
How much PE and KE does he have half
way down the cliff?
Conservation of Energy
What is his velocity as he hits the water?
Conservation Equation
The total energy in a system is equal to the sum of the potential
energy and the kinetic energy at any given time.
ET PE KE
Conservation of Energy
This means that when something falls from a height, its initial
potential energy is equal to its final kinetic energy.
-As an object falls, it is speeding up but
losing height. Therefore, it is gaining kinetic
energy at the same rate that it is losing
potential energy.
-In fact, gravity is doing work on the object to convert its PE into KE!
Conservation of Energy
There are two more important things to realize.
For a given system:
PEmax KEmax
AND
When PE is at its maximum, KE is at its minimum, and
when KE is at its maximum, PE is at its minimum.
The Work-Energy Theorem
The work done on an object is equal to the combination of the
changes in both kinetic and potential energy.
Spring Potential
Just like how increasing the height of an object will store
potential energy in the object based on how much gravity
might be able to move it, elastic things can also store potential
energy. This is known as Elastic Potential Energy.