Discussion

A force of 0.599 newton made by the cart was held constant in order to evaluate the effect
of displacement with respect to work and power, each trial having several runs and producing
averaged values for more precision. Consequently, the relation between gravitational potential
energy and the work done in a curved path was observed.
It could be seen from Table 1 that the highest work done correlates with the highest
distance covered by the fan cart, having twice as high as work implied by the first trial which had
the lowest work done. More importantly, a trend could be drawn from the results that were
obtained in which it satisfies the governing concepts of work. The displacement vs work graph
provides an evident relationship of the two, a direct proportionality. The linearity of the line
solidifies this statement having an R value of 1 with a slope of 0.588. The results obtained are all
plausible and reasonable since work is calculated as the product of displacement and force(in this
case constant) which cancels the possibility of having constant work.
On the other hand, the values of power deviated in each trial in a standard deviation of
0.02601 and showed an increasing trend for this experiment. However, it was suspected
beforehand that the power value should show at least some constant value. Since power is
defined as the change in work divided by the time covered, the additional displacement/work
should be off-set by the time of travel and thus values should meet and agree at a very short
range. The increasing increment are accounted by human and machine errors such as the
inaccuracy of the smart timer and measurement of the displacements.
Table 2. Part 2, shows that an increase in height results to a higher gravitational potential
energy. While the work is dependent on the force, length and the angle imposed by the set-up in
which all are directly proportional. However, a better thing to note here is that the values
obtained for gravitational potential energy (GPE) and work are identical in the five trials. This
implies that the GPE at any height, is equal to the work needed to lift the object. The force that
was noted which is numerically equal to the weight was employed in order to oppose the force of
the gravity pulling downward, thus it is just right to observe this similarity. [.1]
Work, energy and power are very useful tools to further describe and explain the potential
of a system. For an instance, thermodynamic properties could be described by specifying work
and energy. To be more specific, the first law is described by three terms, the change in internal
energy, heat and work done by the system. There are several way to denote work, work done in a
thermodynamic system is usually denoted in terms of pressure and volume in which gas is the
most common state that is doing work. [.2] The transfer and change of energies and the famous
interconversion of potential to kinetic energy is a must know concept in the study of heat and the
main principle of the first law. Thus by the specification of these terms, broad application for the
first law in the likes of heat engines, cooling systems and many more could be made.
1. http://electron6.phys.utk.edu/101/CH1/work.htm
2. http://www.chem1.com/acad/webtext/energetics/CE-1.html An introduction to
chemical energetics and thermodynamics - 1