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Re: [Phys-l] check your work (and kinetic energy)



As has been mentioned here plenty of times before, there are LOTS of fundamentally DIFFERENT quantities that can be and, more importantly, ARE routinely called "work" in various situations. Thus, you have two options:

1) You can doggedly reject most of them them and cling to the idea that ONLY one of them is "correct"

or

2) You can accept the fact that people simply WILL use many different and not unreasonable definitions of work (usually without thinking carefully enough about it) and then try to educate them about the differences between those definitions and what energy changes they turn out to be equal to.

See

http://ajp.aapt.org/resource/1/ajpias/v60/i4/p356_s1?isAuthorized=no

or the summary at

http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm/special/aaw_excerpts.pdf

John Mallinckrodt
Cal Poly Pomona


On Jan 9, 2012, at 1:27 PM, John Denker wrote:

... On the other hand, there remain plennnty of situations where
you cannot calculate the work using total force and average
motion, as diagrammed at
http://www.av8n.com/physics/kinetic-energy.htm#fig-wheel-work