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Concept

As with many concepts in physics, energy—along with the related ideas of work and power—has a meaning much more specific, and in some ways quite different, from itseverydayconnotation. According to the language of physics, a person who strains withoutsuccess to pull a rock out of the ground has done no work, whereas a child playing on a playgroundproduces a great deal of work. Energy, which may be defined as the ability of an object to do work, is neither created nor destroyed; it simply changes form, a conceptthat can be illustrated by the behavior of a bouncingball.

How It Works

In fact, it might actually be more precise to say that energy is the ability of "a thing" or "something" to do work. Not onlytangibleobjects (whether they be organic, mechanical,or electromagnetic) but also non-objects may possess energy. At the subatomiclevel, a particle with no mass may have energy. The same can be said of a magnetic force field.One cannot touch a force field; hence, it is not an object—but obviously, it exists. All onehas to do to prove its existence is to place a natural magnet, such as an ironnail,within the magnetic field. Assuming the force field is strong enough, the nail will move throughspace toward it—and thus the force field will have performed work on the nail.

Work: What It Is and Is Not

Work may be defined in general terms as theexertionof force over a given distance. Inorder for work to be accomplished, there must be a displacement in space—or, incolloquial terms, something has to be moved from point A to point B. As noted earlier,this definition creates results that go against the common-sense definition of "work."A person straining, and failing, to pull a rock from the ground has performed no work (interms of physics) because nothing has been moved. On the other hand, a child on a playground performs considerable work: as she runs from the slide to the swing, for instance, she has moved her own weight (a variety of force) across a distance. She is evenworking when her movement is back-and-forth, as on the swing. This type of movementresults in no net displacement, but as long as displacement has occurred at all, work hasoccurred.Similarly, when a man completes a full push-up, his body is in the same position— parallel to the floor, arms extended to support him—as he was before he began it; yet hehas accomplished work. If, on the other hand, he at the end of his energy, his chest is onthe floor, straining but failing, to complete just one more push-up, then he is not working.The fact that he feels as though he has worked may matter in a personal sense, but it doesnot in terms of physics.

Calculating Work

Work can be defined more specifically as the product of force and distance, where thosetwo vectors are exerted in the same direction. Suppose one were to drag a block of acertain weight across a given distance of floor. The amount of force one exerts parallel tothe floor itself,multipliedby the distance, is equal to the amount of work exerted. On theother hand, if one pulls up on the block in a position perpendicular to the floor, that force does not contribute toward the work of dragging the block across the floor, because it isnot par allel to distance as defined in this particular situation.Similarly, if one exerts force on the block at an angle to the floor, only a portion of thatforce counts toward the net product of work—a portion that must be quantified in termsof trigonometry. The line of force parallel to the floor may be thought of as the base of atriangle, with a line perpendicular to the floor as its second side. Hence there is a 90°-angle, making it a right triangle with ahypotenuse. The hypotenuse is the line of force,which again is at an angle to the floor.The component of force that counts toward the total work on the block is equal to thetotal force multiplied by the cosine of the angle. A cosine is the ratio between the legadjacent to an acute (less than 90°) angle and the hypotenuse. The leg adjacent to theacute angle is, of course, the base of the triangle, which is parallel to the floor itself. Sizesof triangles may vary, but the ratio expressed by a cosine (abbreviated cos) does not.Hence, if one is pulling on the block by a rope that makes a 30°-angle to the floor, thenforce must be multiplied by cos 30°, which is equal to 0.866. Note that the cosine is less than 1; hence when multiplied by the total force exerted, itwill yield a figure 13.4% smaller than the total force. In fact, the larger the angle, thesmaller the cosine; thus for 90°, the value of cos = 0. On the other hand, for an angle of 0°, cos = 1. Thus, if total force is exerted parallel to the floor—that is, at a 0°-angle to it —then the component of force that counts toward total work is equal to the total force.From thestandpointof physics, this would be a highly work-intensive operation.

Gravity and Other Peculiarities of Work

The above discussion relates entirely to work along a horizontal plane. On the vertical plane, by contrast, work is much simpler to calculate due to the presence of a constantdownward force, which is, of course, gravity. The force of gravity accelerates objects at arate of 32 ft (9.8 m)/sec

. The mass (

) of an object multiplied by the rate of gravitationalacceleration (

) yields its weight, and the formula for work done against gravity is equalto weight multiplied by height (

) above some lower reference point:

mgh.

Distance and force are both vectors—that is, quantities possessing both magnitude anddirection. Yet work, though it is the product of these two vectors, is ascalar , meaning thatonly the magnitude of work (and not the direction over which it is exerted) is important.Hence

mgh

can refer either to the upward work one exerts against gravity (that is, bylifting an object to a certain height), or to the downward work that gravity performs onthe object when it is dropped. The direction of

does not matter, and its value is purelyrelative, referring to the vertical distance between one point and another.

The fact that gravity can "do work"—and the irrelevance of direction—further illustratesthe truth that work, in the sense in which it is applied by physicists, is quite different from"work" as it understood in the day-to-day world. There is a highly personal quality to theeveryday meaning of the term, which is completely lacking from its physics definition.If someone carried a heavy box up five flights of stairs, that person would quite naturallyfeel justified in saying "I've worked." Certainly he or she would feel that the work expended was far greater than that of someone who had simply allowed the the elevator to carry the box up those five floors. Yet in terms of work done against gravity, the work done on the box by the elevator is exactly the same as that performed by the personcarrying itupstairs. The identity of the "worker"—not to mention thesweatexpended or not expended—isirrelevant from the standpoint of physics.

Measurement of Work and Power

In the metric system, a newton (N) is the amount of force required to accelerate 1 kg of mass by 1 meter per second squared (m/s

). Work is measured by the joule(J), equal to 1newton-meter (N · m). The British unit of force is the pound, and work is measured infoot-pounds, or the work done by a force of 1 lb over a distance of one foot.Power, the rate at which work is accomplished over time, is the same as work divided bytime. It can also be calculated in terms of force multiplied by speed, much like the force-multiplied-by-distance formula for work. However, as with work, the force and speedmust be in the same direction. Hence, the formula for power in these terms is

· cos θ ·

where

=force,

=speed, and cos θ is equal to the cosine of the angle θ (the Greek letter theta) between

and the direction of

The metric-system measure of power is the watt, named after James Watt (1736-1819),the Scottish inventor who developed the first fully viable steam engine and thus helpedinaugurate the Industrial Revolution. A watt is equal to 1 joule per second, but this is sucha small unit that it is more typical to speak in terms of kilowatts, or units of 1,000 watts. Ironically, Watt himself—like most people in the British Isles and America—lived in aworld that used the British system, in which the unit of power is the foot-pound per second. The latter, too, is very small, so for measuring the power of his steam engine,Watt suggested a unit based on something quite familiar to the people of his time: the power of a horse. One horsepower (hp) is equal to 550 foot-pounds per second.

Sorting Out Metric and British Units

The British system, of course, is horridlycumbersomecompared to the metric system,and thus it long ago fell out of favor with the international scientific community. TheBritish system is the product of loosely developed conventions that emerged over time:for instance, a foot was based on the length of the reigning king's foot, and in time, this became standardized. By contrast, the metric system was created quite deliberately over amatter of just a few years following the French Revolution, which broke out in 1789. Themetric system was adopted ten years later.