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The ancient Greek understanding of physics was limited to the statics of simple machines (the balance of forces), and did not include dynamics or the concept of work. During the Renaissance the dynamics of the Mechanical Powers, as the simple machines were called, began to be studied from the standpoint of how far they could lift a load, in addition to the force they could apply, leading ...
Power in mechanical systems is the combination of forces and movement. In particular, power is the product of a force on an object and the object's velocity, or the product of a torque on a shaft and the shaft's angular velocity. Mechanical power is also described as the time derivative of work.
Drawing on all the previous work led Sadi Carnot, the "father of thermodynamics", to publish Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire (1824), a discourse on heat, power, energy and engine efficiency. The book outlined the basic energetic relations between the Carnot engine, the Carnot cycle, and motive power. It marked the start of ...
energy efficiency: unitless (dynamic) viscosity (also ) pascal second (Pa⋅s) theta: angular displacement: radian (rad) kappa: torsion coefficient also called torsion constant newton meter per radian (N⋅m/rad) lambda: cosmological constant
Electrical efficiency, useful power output per electrical power consumed; Mechanical efficiency, a ratio of the measured performance to the performance of an ideal machine; Thermal efficiency, the extent to which the energy added by heat is converted to net work output or vice versa; Luminous efficiency, a measure of how well a light source ...
In physics, work output is the work done by a simple machine, compound machine, or any type of engine model.In common terms, it is the energy output, which for simple machines is always less than the energy input, even though the forces may be drastically different.
Carnot engine diagram (modern) - where an amount of heat Q H flows from a high temperature T H furnace through the fluid of the "working body" (working substance) and the remaining heat Q C flows into the cold sink T C, thus forcing the working substance to do mechanical work W on the surroundings, via cycles of contractions and expansions.
Thermodynamic work is one of the principal kinds of process by which a thermodynamic system can interact with and transfer energy to its surroundings. This results in externally measurable macroscopic forces on the system's surroundings, which can cause mechanical work, to lift a weight, for example, [1] or cause changes in electromagnetic, [2] [3] [4] or gravitational [5] variables.