But once up to speed, the tray will stay in its straight-line motion at a constant speed without a forward force. It can be accurately noted that the waiter's hand did push forward on the tray for a brief period of time to accelerate it from rest to a final walking speed. A vertical force can never cause a horizontal displacement thus, a vertical force does not do work on a horizontally displaced object!! Regardless of the magnitude of the force and displacement, F*d*cosine 90 degrees is 0 (since the cosine of 90 degrees is 0). If the work done by the waiter on the tray were to be calculated, then the results would be 0. As such, the angle between the force and the displacement is 90 degrees. The force supplied by the waiter on the tray is an upward force and the displacement of the tray is a horizontal displacement. It was mentioned earlier that the waiter does not do work upon the tray as he carries it across the room.
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Scenario C involves a situation similar to the waiter who carried a tray full of meals above his head by one arm straight across the room at constant speed. Let's consider Scenario C above in more detail. To Do Work, Forces Must Cause Displacements Thus, the angle between F and d is 90 degrees. In such an instance, the force vector and the displacement vector are at right angles to each other.
Thus, the angle between F and d is 180 degrees. In such an instance, the force vector and the displacement vector are in the opposite direction.
In each case described here there is a force exerted upon an object to cause that object to be displaced. There are several good examples of work that can be observed in everyday life - a horse pulling a plow through the field, a father pushing a grocery cart down the aisle of a grocery store, a freshman lifting a backpack full of books upon her shoulder, a weightlifter lifting a barbell above his head, an Olympian launching the shot-put, etc. In order for a force to qualify as having done work on an object, there must be a displacement and the force must cause the displacement. There are three key ingredients to work - force, displacement, and cause. When a force acts upon an object to cause a displacement of the object, it is said that work was done upon the object. Thus, Lesson 1 of this unit will focus on the definitions and meanings of such terms as work, mechanical energy, potential energy, kinetic energy, and power. In order to understand this work-energy approach to the analysis of motion, it is important to first have a solid understanding of a few basic terms. The effect that work has upon the energy of an object (or system of objects) will be investigated the resulting velocity and/or height of the object can then be predicted from energy information. Motion will be approached from the perspective of work and energy. In this unit, an entirely different model will be used to analyze the motion of objects. In this manner, Newton's laws serve as a useful model for analyzing motion and making predictions about the final state of an object's motion. Acceleration information was subsequently used to determine information about the velocity or displacement of an object after a given period of time. Force and mass information were used to determine the acceleration of an object. In the first three units of The Physics Classroom, we utilized Newton's laws to analyze the motion of objects.