13.6 When does work equal force times distance? by Benjamin Crowell, Light and Matter licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
In the example of the tractor pulling the plow discussed on page 325, the work did not equal `Fd`. The purpose of this section is to explain more fully how the quantity `Fd` can and cannot be used. To simplify things, I write `Fd` throughout this section, but more generally everything said here would be true for the area under the graph of `F_(?)` versus `d`.
The following two theorems allow most of the ambiguity to be cleared up.
The change in kinetic energy associated with the motion of an object's center of mass is related to the total force acting on it and to the distance traveled by its center of mass according to the equation `DeltaKE_(cm)=F_"total"d_(cm)`.
This can be proved based on Newton's second law and the equation `KE=1"/"2mv^2`. Note that despite the traditional name, it does not necessarily tell the amount of work done, since the forces acting on the object could be changing other types of energy besides the `KE` associated with its center of mass motion.
The second theorem does relate directly to work:
When a contact force acts between two objects and the two surfaces do not slip past each other, the work done equals , where `d` is the distance traveled by the point of contact.
This one has no generally accepted name, so we refer to it simply as the second theorem.
A great number of physical situations can be analyzed with these two theorems, and often it is advantageous to apply both of them to the same situation.
The work-kinetic energy theorem tells us how to calculate the skater's kinetic energy if we know the amount of force and the distance her center of mass travels while she is pushing off.
The second theorem tells us that the wall does no work on the skater. This makes sense, since the wall does not have any source of energy.
`=>` Is it possible to absorb an impact without recoiling? For instance, would a brick wall “give” at all if hit by a ping-pong ball?
`=>` There will always be a recoil. In the example proposed, the wall will surely have some energy transferred to it in the form of heat and vibration. The second theorem tells us that we can only have nonzero work if the distance traveled by the point of contact is nonzero.
Newton's first law tells us that the total force on the refrigerator must be zero: your force is canceling the floor's kinetic frictional force. The work-kinetic energy theorem is therefore true but useless. It tells us that there is zero total force on the refrigerator, and that the refrigerator's kinetic energy doesn't change.
The second theorem tells us that the work you do equals your hand's force on the refrigerator multiplied by the distance traveled. Since we know the floor has no source of energy, the only way for the floor and refrigerator to gain energy is from the work you do. We can thus calculate the total heat dissipated by friction in the refrigerator and the floor.
Note that there is no way to find how much of the heat is dissipated in the floor and how much in the refrigerator.
If you push on a cart and accelerate it, there are two forces acting on the cart: your hand's force, and the static frictional force of the ground pushing on the wheels in the opposite direction.
Applying the second theorem to your force tells us how to calculate the work you do.
Applying the second theorem to the floor's force tells us that the floor does no work on the cart. There is no motion at the point of contact, because the atoms in the floor are not moving. (The atoms in the surface of the wheel are also momentarily at rest when they touch the floor.) This makes sense, since the floor does not have any source of energy.
The work-kinetic energy theorem refers to the total force, and because the floor's backward force cancels part of your force, the total force is less than your force. This tells us that only part of your work goes into the kinetic energy associated with the forward motion of the cart's center of mass. The rest goes into rotation of the wheels.
13.6 When does work equal force times distance? by Benjamin Crowell, Light and Matter licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.