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N19 - Conservation of Energy

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30 views4 pages

N19 - Conservation of Energy

Uploaded by

vertxice420
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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CONSERVATION OF ENERGY

PHYSICS

Most of the energy-based questions you will see on a physics test will require you to do more than just calculate how
much potential and/or kinetic energy an object has. A large number of the questions you will do will involve comparing
an object’s energy at two or more points in time.

One of the fundamental principles of physics is the conservation of energy. It says that energy
cannot be created or destroyed – only changed from one form to another. Suppose you drop a
soccer ball, as you held the soccer ball above the ground it had gravitational potential energy. When
you let the ball drop, that potential energy didn’t just disappear. Instead it simple changed form and
converted into kinetic energy.

Consider a driver that applies the brakes to stop a moving car. The car originally had kinetic energy
but as the driver applied the brakes that kinetic energy didn’t just disappear – instead it was
converted into thermal energy due to friction.

In both cases energy was conserved.

However, physicists often make a distinction between situations in which total energy is conserved and mechanical
energy is conserved. Remember that mechanical energy is just potential energy + kinetic energy. Total energy is always
conserved, but mechanical energy may or may not be conserved. Going back to our examples above, since both
gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy are forms of mechanical energy and all the gravitational potential
energy became kinetic energy, we can say that not only was energy conserved, but that total mechanical energy was
conserved. However, thermal energy is NOT a form of mechanical energy and so in the case of the braking car – energy
was conserved, but total mechanical was NOT conserved.

Consider an airplane flying through the air. We know that is has both kinetic energy and
gravitational potential energy. In physics, we can treat this flying airplane as a system. A
system is an object or collection of objects in a particular place that we have defined. We
don’t care about anything outside the system – unless it affects what’s going on inside the
system.

In many questions we can assume that we are dealing with an isolated system. An isolated system simply means a
situation where neither energy nor matter is allowed to enter or leave or leave the system. Since isolated systems can’t
gain or lose energy – that means that there is no work done by non-conservative forces (ex. Friction) and we know that
the total mechanical energy will remain the same.

In equation form, that looks like this:


[ ] [ ]

IMPORTANT: Remember that this equation is only valid when there are no non-conservative forces (like friction) doing
work on the system. The text of a problem might include language that “friction is negligible” or “assume air resistance
is negligible”, etc. If there is work involved (including work done by friction), we need to add that to the equation:
[ ] [ ]
Sample Problem: Wile E. Coyote is trying to drop a 10 kg boulder off a 10 m high cliff to hit the Roadrunner eating a
bowl of birdseed on the road below. Assuming air resistance is negligible; calculate the speed of the boulder when it is 5
meters off of the ground.

An 850 kg roller-coaster car is released from rest at Point A of the track shown in the figure. Assume that there is no
friction or air resistance between Points A and C.

Sample Problem: How fast is the roller-coaster moving at Point B?

Sample Problem: What average force is required to bring the roller-coaster to a stop at Point D if the brakes are applied
at Point C? (Hint: what energy would the roller-coaster car still have at point D)
Sample Problem: A toy car with a mass of 120 grams is pushed by a student along a track so that it is moving at a
constant speed of 4.00 m/s. It hits a spring (k = 900 N/m) at the end of the track, causing the spring to compress. Friction
between the track and toy car is negligible, determine how far the spring compressed in order to bring the car to a stop.

Sample Problem: A student carries out the experiment using a toy car and the spring and notices that it compresses only
two centimeters in bringing the car to a stop, calculate the work done by friction.
Sample Problem: Starting from rest, Angel and Britney skateboard down a hill as shown in the figure above. Angel rides
down the steep side while Britney rides down the shallow side. Angel has more mass than Britney. Assume that friction
and air resistance are negligible.

a. Is the gravitational potential energy at the top of the hill greater for Angel, greater for Britney, or the same for both
skateboarders?

b. Is the speed at the bottom of the hill greater for Angel, greater for Britney, or the same for both skateboarders?
Justify your answer.

c. Is the time it takes to get to the bottom of the hill greater for Angel, greater for Britney, or the same for both
skateboarders?

d. Is the kinetic energy at the bottom of the hill greater for Angel, greater for Britney, or the same for both
skateboarders?

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