Work
- Work is the product of force and displacement. In physics, a force is said to do work if, when acting, there is a movement of the point of application in the direction of the force.
Scalar
- A scalar or scalar quantity in physics is a physical quantity that can be described by a single element of a number field such as a real number, often accompanied by units of measurement. A scalar is usually said to be a physical quantity that only has magnitude and no other characteristics.
Work Energy Theorem
- States that the work done by the sum of all forces acting on a particle equals the change in the kinetic energy of the particle.
Force
- A force is any interaction that, when unopposed, will change the motion of an object. A force can cause an object with mass to change its velocity, i.e., to accelerate. Force can also be described intuitively as a push or a pull. A force has both magnitude and direction, making it a vector quantity.
Distance
- Distance is a scalar quantity that refers to “how much ground an object has covered” during its motion. Displacement is a vector quantity that refers to “how far out of place an object is”; it is the object’s overall change in position.
Power
- Power is the rate of doing work or of transferring heat, i.e. the amount of energy transferred or converted per unit time. Having no direction, it is a scalar quantity.
Conservative Forces
- Any force, such as the gravitational force between the Earth and another mass, whose work is determined only by the final displacement of the object acted upon.
- The work done by gravity just depends on initial and final locations, regardless of path
Nonconservative Forces
- Forces that do not store energy are called nonconservative or dissipative forces. Friction is a nonconservative force, and there are others. Any friction-type force, like air resistance, is a nonconservative force. The energy that it removes from the system is no longer available to the system for kinetic energy.
- The work done by friction is path dependent.
Mechanical Advantage
- Mechanical advantage is a measure of the force amplification achieved by using a tool, mechanical device or machine system. The device preserves the input power and simply trades off forces against movement to obtain a desired amplification in the output force. The model for this is the law of the lever.
- Efficiency is a measure of how much work or energy is conserved in a process. In many processes, work or energy is lost, for example as waste heat or vibration. The efficiency is the energy output, divided by the energy input, and expressed as a percentage. A perfect process would have an efficiency of 100%.