Work and Power

Do you think you get a lot of work done when doing your homework?  Do you work at a job? Do you do a lot of work while working out at the gym? In these situations very little work actually gets done, according to the definition of work used by physicists. In this lesson, you will learn about work and power, define these terms as a physicist defines them, and calculate work and power for common situations.

Essential Questions:

• What is work and how can you tell if work is being done?
• What is power and how do you calculate the power output of a system?
• What are the physical units of work and power and how are they related to other units of kinematics?