Work and Potential Energy
The scalar product of a force F and the velocity v of its point of application defines the power input to a system at an instant of time. Integration of this power over the trajectory of the point of application, C=x(t), defines the work input to the system by the force.
Read more about this topic: Work (physics)
Famous quotes containing the words work and, work, potential and/or energy:
“I must work, so as not to be a fool, to get on, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want!... I can’t imagine that I would have to lead the same sort of life as Mummy ... and all the women who do their work and are then forgotten. I must have something besides a husband and children, something that I can devote myself to!”
—Anne Frank (1929–1945)
“Even if matter could do every outward thing that God does, the idea of it would not work as satisfactorily, because the chief call for a God on modern men’s part is for a being who will inwardly recognize them and judge them sympathetically. Matter disappoints this craving of our ego, so God remains for most men the truer hypothesis, and indeed remains so for definite pragmatic reasons.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Most days I feel like an acrobat high above a crowd out of which my own parents, my in-laws, potential employers, phantoms of “other women who do it” and a thousand faceless eyes stare up.”
—Anonymous Mother. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 2 (1978)
“Three elements go to make up an idea. The first is its intrinsic quality as a feeling. The second is the energy with which it affects other ideas, an energy which is infinite in the here-and-nowness of immediate sensation, finite and relative in the recency of the past. The third element is the tendency of an idea to bring along other ideas with it.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)