29-Sep.-14: Work, Energy, and Power

Purpose:

To understand more about the concepts of energy by calculating the work and power done on a mass.

Apparatus:

Our set-up required -

a staircase, 4.42m

a balcony,

a one-way pulley,

a 5 kilogram backpack, and

a rope.

 

 

The staircase provided a way for us to measure the height from the ground to the floor of the balcony by measuring the height of one step and multiplying that value by the number of steps.

The balcony allowed us to secure the pulley a decent height above the ground so that we could do work on the 5kg mass using the rope while timing how long it would take to perform that amount of work using a stopwatch.

Experiment:

We began by measuring the height of one step on the stair case, which we agreed measured 17 centimeters - after counting 26 steps, the total height of the staircase was then calculated to be 4.42 meters.

Next, we measured 

1. The work it took for Michael, whose mass is 77-kg, to go up the 4.42-m staircase.
2. The power for Michael to walk up the stairs in 15.6 seconds.
3. The power for Michael to run up the stairs in 5.03 seconds.

Then, we measured the work and power of the backback - for this part we measured the same values of the backpack as we did with Michael.

1. The work done on the backpack through 4.42-m.
2. The power while raising the backpack in 3.5-sec.

A Great Day for Physics.

(9/17/14 6:56am)