Work, Energy, and Power

Abstract

Work, energy, and powerare words that have different meanings in our everyday life. Nevertheless, physicists give them specific definitions, which we present in this chapter. The work-energypower approach provides identical results to those obtained by Newtonian mechanics, but usually with simpler analysis, especially when dealing with complex situations where forces are not constant. Therefore, we will introduce two extremely important concepts: the work-energy-theoremand conservation of energy.