Conceptual Questions

Energy of a system

Q#1: Can a normal force do work? If not, why not? If so, give an example.
Answer: Yes. The floor of a rising elevator does work on a passenger. A normal
force exerted by a stationary solid surface does no work.

Q#2: Object 1 pushes on object 2 as the objects move together, like a bulldozer
pushing a stone. Assume object 1 does 15.0 J of work on object 2. Does object 2
do work on object 1? Explain your answer. If possible, determine how much
work and explain your reasoning.
Answer: Yes. Object 1 exerts some forward force on object 2 as they move
through the same displacement. By Newton’s third law, object 2 exerts an
equal-size force in the opposite direction on object 1. In W = FΔr cosθ, the
factors F and Δr are the same, and θ differs by 180º, so object 2 does −15.0 J of
work on object 1. The energy transfer is 15 J from object 1 to object 2, which can
be counted as a change in energy of −15 J for object 1 and a change in energy of
+15 J for object 2.

Q#3: A student has the idea that the total work done on an object is equal to its
final kinetic energy. Is this idea true always, sometimes, or never? If it is
sometimes true, under what circumstances? If it is always or never true, explain
why.
Answer: It is sometimes true. If the object is a particle initially at rest, the net
work done on the object is equal to its final kinetic energy. If the object is not a
particle, the work could go into (or come out of) some other form of energy. If
the object is initially moving, its initial kinetic energy must be added to the total
work to find the final kinetic energy.
Q#4: (a) For what values of the angle u between two vectors is their scalar
product positive? (b) For what values of uis their scalar product negative?
Answer: The scalar product of two vectors is positive if the angle between them
is between 0° and 90°, including 0°. The scalar product is negative when 90° < θ
≤ 180°.

Q#5: Can kinetic energy be negative? Explain.

Q#6: Discuss the work done by a pitcher throwing a baseball. What is the
approximate distance through which the force acts as the ball is thrown?
Answer: Work is only done in accelerating the ball from rest. The work is done
over the effective length of the pitcher’s arm—the distance his hand moves
through windup and until release. He extends this distance by taking a step
forward.

Q#7: Discuss whether any work is being done by each of the following agents
and, if so, whether the work is positive or negative. (a) a chicken scratching the
ground (b) a person studying (c) a crane lifting a bucket of concrete (d) the
gravitational force on the bucket in part (c) (e) the leg muscles of a person in the
act of sitting down.
Answer: (a) Positive work is done by the chicken on the dirt. (b) The person
does no work on anything in the environment. Perhaps some extra chemical
energy goes through being energy transmitted electrically and is converted into
internal energy in his brain; but it would be very hard to quantify “extra.” (c)
Positive work is done on the bucket. (d) Negative work is done on the bucket.
(e) Negative work is done on the person’s torso.
Q#8: If only one external force acts on a particle, does it necessarily change the
particle’s (a) kinetic energy? (b) Its velocity?
Answer: (a) Not necessarily. It does if it makes the object’s speed change, but
not if it only makes the direction of the velocity change.
(b) Yes, according to Newton’s second law.

Q#9: Preparing to clean them, you pop all the removable keys off a computer
keyboard. Each key has the shape of a tiny box with one side open. By accident,
you spill the keys onto the floor. Explain why many more keys land letter-side
down than land open-side down.
Answer: The gravitational energy of the key-Earth system is lowest when the
key is on the floor letter-side-down. The average height of particles in the key is
lowest in that configuration. As described by F = −dU/dx, a force pushes the key
downhill in potential energy toward the bottom of a graph of potential energy
versus orientation angle. Friction removes mechanical energy from the key-
Earth system, tending to leave the key in its minimum-potential energy
configuration.

Q#10: You are reshelving books in a library. You lift a book from the floor to the
top shelf. The kinetic energy of the book on the floor was zero and the kinetic
energy of the book on the top shelf is zero, so no change occurs in the kinetic
energy, yet you did some work in lifting the book. Is the work–kinetic energy
theorem violated? Explain.
Answer: There is no violation. Choose the book as the system. You did positive
work (average force and displacement are in same direction) and the Earth did
negative work (average force and displacement are in opposite directions) on
the book. The average force you exerted just counterbalanced the weight of the
book. The total work on the book is zero, and is equal to its overall change in
kinetic energy.
Q#11: A certain uniform spring has spring constant k. Now the spring is cut in
half. What is the relationship between k and the spring constant k9 of each
resulting smaller spring? Explain your reasoning.
Answer: k′ = 2k. Think of the original spring as being composed of two half-
springs. The same force F that stretches the whole spring by x stretches
each of the half-springs by x/2; therefore, the spring constant for each
of the half-springs is k′ = [F/(x/2)] = 2(F/x) = 2k.

Q#12: What shape would the graph of U versus x have if a particle were in a
region of neutral equilibrium?
Answer: A graph of potential energy versus position is a straight horizontal line
for a particle in neutral equilibrium. The graph represents a constant
function.

Q#13: Does the kinetic energy of an object depend on the frame of reference in
which its motion is measured? Provide an example to prove this point.
Answer: Yes. As you ride an express subway train, a backpack at your feet has
no kinetic energy as measured by you since, according to you, the backpack is
not moving. In the frame of reference of someone on the side of the tracks as
the train rolls by, the backpack is moving and has mass, and thus has kinetic
energy.

Q#14: Cite two examples in which a force is exerted on an object without doing
any work on the object.
Answer: Force of tension on a ball moving in a circle on the end of a string.
Normal force and gravitational force on an object at rest or moving across a
level floor.