TOPIC: Work, Energy and Power

Objective:
By the end of this topic you will be able to:
• define work and power
• define the units: joule and watt
• calculate the work done by, and the power of a machine.
 Work, Energy and Power

The earliest stone tools ever discovered, thought to have been used by our
ape-like ancestor Homo erectus, are over two million years old. Since that
time long ago,our development and progress have been closely linked with
making and using tools and machines

All machines, whether simple or complex, allow a force applied at one

place to overcome another force at a different place . Overcoming a force
involves doing work. Machines in action do work by taking in energy at one
end and feeding it out at the other end, perhaps in a different form. So to
understand machines we must look carefully at what we mean by work,
energy and the power of a machine.

Work
In science we use the word work in a precise way. For example, if you lift a
brick from the ground and put it on a wall or if you climb up the stairs you
are 'working' in the scientific sense of the word. Similarly if you push a pram
or a bicycle and it moves you are also working, but if you push a wall and it
remains standing, although you may get tired, you are not working. For
work to be done a force must produce motion.
Example a.
• Force F is a pushing force that moves the roller.
• The roller moves in the same direction as the force, a distance.
• The pushing force moves with the roller.
• The weight of the roller (acting downwards) and the normal contact force
of the ground (acting upwards) act on the roller but do no work because
they act at right angles to the motion.
Example b raising the man because it does not move upwards with the
man. Internal forces, mainly within the muscles of the man's legs, push his
body upwards.
• The internal forces, acting upwards through his center of gravity, are
equal
and opposite to his weight overcome the pull of the Earth (hisweight).
• The work done depends on the vertical height h climbed or the distance
moved upwards by the pushing force.
Calculating work done:

Work done = force x distance moved in the direction of the force.

W = F x s

The unit of work, given by force x distance, is the newton-meter

and it is called the joule (J).

A joule is the work done when the point of application of a

force of 1N is moved through a distance of 1m in the
direction of the force.

1 joule = 1 newton x 1 meter

Calculating work done:

Energy and power
The energy that something has is a measure of its ability to do work. So, for
example, there is more energy stored in a full tank of petrol than in a
half-full tank, because it is able to do more work to move the car further.
The unit of energy, the joule (j), is the same as the unit of work.

Machines transfer or convert energy

The action of a machine is to convert the energy supplied to it into another
form of energy or to transfer the energy to another place. The total energy
output from a machine is always equal to the energy input or, in other
words, energy is always conserved by a machine. In this sense machines
do not 'use up' or 'consume' energy even though they need an energy input
to be able to do work.
120 x 103 J
Power
We all know that a more powerful car can climb hills faster and a more
powerful electric saw can cut wood faster. As soon as power is mentioned
we are thinking about how quickly work can be done. The power of a
machine is a measure of how much work it can do (like climbing a hill or
cutting wood) in a certain time.

The units of power given by the formula are joule/second or joules per
second also called the watt (W), named after James Watt (1735-1819).
Measuring your own power output
Your rate of working is probably at its highest when you are running up a
hill or up stairs lifting your own weight.
• Get another person to time how long it takes you to run up a long flight of
steps.
• Measure the height of one step and count the number of steps you
climbed. You also need to know your own weight.