Bill's job is to lift bags of flour and place them in the...

Name: Problem 16, Chapter 7: Physics: A Conceptual World View
Uploaded: 2020-06-15T12:46:00-08:00
Duration: 2 min 24 s
Channel: Surjit Tewari
Description: Bill's job is to lift bags of flour and place them in the back of a truck, which is parked right next to him. Sally is loading the same bags of flour into a similar truck that is located 10 meters away. Sally wants a raise because she says that she is doing more work than Bill. Does the physics definition of work support her claim?

Bill's job is to lift bags of flour and place them in the back of a truck, which is parked right next to him. Sally is loading the same bags of flour into a similar truck that is located 10 meters away. Sally wants a raise because she says that she is doing more work than Bill. Does the physics definition of work support her claim?

Labs

Want to see this concept in action?

NEW

Explore this concept interactively to see how it behaves as you change inputs.

View Labs

Key Concepts

Displacement

Displacement is the vector quantity that denotes the change in position of an object. In the work calculation, it is the component of the displacement that is aligned with the direction of the applied force that counts towards the work performed.

Application of the Work Definition

The physics definition of work focuses entirely on the force applied and the displacement in its direction, regardless of the worker's path or additional movements. This means that if two tasks involve the same amount of force and displacement of the object, they are considered equivalent in terms of work done, even if one task requires the worker to travel a greater distance.

Work

In physics, work is defined as the product of the force applied to an object and the displacement of that object in the direction of the force, expressed as W = F x d x cos?. Only the component of the force that acts in the direction of the displacement contributes to the work done, making it an objective measure based solely on these factors.

Force

Force is a vector quantity that represents a push or pull on an object, which can change its state of motion. The magnitude and direction of the force are critical in determining how much work is performed when the object moves.

Transcript

Please give Ace some feedback