Coasting Up a Hill

a. How high a hill can a car coast up (engine disengaged) if the work done by friction is negligible
and its initial speed is 92 km/h? Express your answer in m.

b. If, in actuality, a 737-kg car with an initial speed of 92 km/h is observed to coast up a hill to a
height 22.0 m above its starting point, how much thermal energy was generated by friction?
Express your answer in J.

c. What is the magnitude of the average force of friction if the hill has a slope 2.5∘ above the
horizontal?
Run Time for a Battery
a. What is the available energy content, in joules, of a battery that operates on a 1.73 W electric
clock for 19 months?

b. How long can a battery that can supply 8.2 ∗104𝐽 run a pocket calculator that consumes energy
at a rate of 1.25∗10−3𝑊 ? Give your answer in years.

Efficiency of a professor and athlete

a. What is the efficiency (in %) of an out-of-condition professor who does 2.2∗105𝐽 of useful work
while metabolizing 590 kcal of food energy?

b. How many food calories would a well-conditioned athlete metabolize in doing the same work with
an efficiency of 18 %? Give your answer in kcal.
a. Consider a student of mass 𝑚=59 kg running on a force platform, as she is propelling herself
forward during a single step. Let 𝐹𝑣(𝑡) be the total vertical force (as a function of time) she exerts
on the ground, and let 𝐹ℎ(𝑡) be the horizontal force she exerts on the ground, and let 𝑊 be her
weight. Draw a free-body diagram of the person (notice that all the forces mentioned above were
from foot on the ground, not on the person --- remember Newton's third law!). Write down the
corresponding 𝐹=𝑚𝑎 equations, for both the 𝑥 and the 𝑦 direction.

b. What physical force (normal, gravity, static/kinetic friction) is the ground using to push the student
forward? Explain.

c. The force platform measures net vertical and net horizontal forces on it, denoted 𝐹𝑣 and 𝐹ℎ
above. If you are allowed to calibrate the force platform, i.e. set the zero of force readings, how
would you calibrate it to only show you the force due to the muscle contraction in the vertical
direction and not the weight?
d. We have calibrated the force platform, and it now gives us directly 𝐹muscle v=𝐹𝑣−𝑊 and
𝐹muscle h=𝐹ℎ . We conduct an experiment: the student runs across the force platform at 𝑣=9
mph with 1.2 m step length. During a single step, we find she applies a (approximately constant)
horizontal force 𝐹muscle h(𝑡)=200 N for 0.06 s to push herself forward, and a vertical force
𝐹muscle v(𝑡)=312 N for 0.2 s to push herself upward. Using your equations for acceleration in
part (a), determine the change in the horizontal velocity Δ𝑣ℎ , and the height of the bounce''.
(Hint: for the bounce, the vertical force gives a net vertical velocity: at the top of the trajectory, that
velocity is entirely converted to potential energy.)

e. From the change in the velocity and the height, determine the change in mechanical energy and
hence the positive work done by her muscles over a single step.

f. Using this work, and the fact that running at 9 mph with 1.2 m step length for someone who
weighs 59 kg requires roughly 610 W of power (see a table from your reading last week),
calculate the efficiency of the student's running. How does this compare to other efficiencies you
encounter in everyday life? (Hint: you calculated the positive work during a single step. If a single
step is about 1.2 m long, how many steps do you have to make per minute to keep running at 9
mph?)