Today we did an activity to determine work and power. The activity was to run up a certain amount of stairs and find out how much work and power we used during the run. First we had to weigh ourselves because that will help us to determine the work, which will after help us to determine the power used by each person.Then we had to measure the height of the stairs and make sure that all the stairs were the same height. Then we chose the amount of stairs we wanted to use. Sophie and I chose to use six stairs that were each 16.5 cm high. Then we timed ourselves running up the stairs. After timing ourselves we used w=FD. For me, I had 2241.164 joules of work and Sophie did 2561.328 joules of work. The larger the mass, the more work there is. For power, we used p=work/time. For power, the more work done the less power there is and vice versa.
If you swing a bowling ball hanging from a string at a certain spot, without pushing with intentional force, it shouldn't hit you when it comes back down if you don't move. This is because it loses power because it loses work because it's going a lesser distance since gravity is pushing it down to the earth. It should keep swinging forever unless acted by other forces like gravity and normal forces.
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| Driving in a car is an example of power and work. You are doing work because you are going a distance and have a force for instance the weight. You have power because you have work and it takes a certain time to get places. |
IT's good how you put all the equations, as well as related it to something simple and every-day, like driving!
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