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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 ...
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.
Power is the rate with respect to time at which work is done; it is the time derivative of work: =, where P is power, W is work, and t is time. We will now show that the mechanical power generated by a force F on a body moving at the velocity v can be expressed as the product: P = d W d t = F ⋅ v {\displaystyle P={\frac {dW}{dt}}=\mathbf {F ...
Work and heat express physical processes of supply or removal of energy, while the internal energy is a mathematical abstraction that keeps account of the changes of energy that befall the system. The term Q {\displaystyle Q} is the quantity of energy added or removed as heat in the thermodynamic sense, not referring to a form of energy within ...
It can be adapted to similar equations e.g. F = ma, v = fλ, E = mcΔT, V = π r 2 h and τ = rF sinθ. When a variable with an exponent or in a function is covered, the corresponding inverse is applied to the remainder, i.e. = and = .
The work can be done, for example, by electrochemical devices (electrochemical cells) or different metals junctions [clarification needed] generating an electromotive force. Electric field work is formally equivalent to work by other force fields in physics, [1] and the formalism for electrical work is identical to that of mechanical work.
In solid-state physics, the work function (sometimes spelled workfunction) is the minimum thermodynamic work (i.e., energy) needed to remove an electron from a solid to a point in the vacuum immediately outside the solid surface. Here "immediately" means that the final electron position is far from the surface on the atomic scale, but still too ...
The idea that heat and work are equivalent was also proposed by Julius Robert von Mayer in 1842 in the leading German physics journal and independently by James Prescott Joule in 1843, in the leading British physics journal. Similar work was carried out by Ludwig A. Colding in 1840–1843, though Colding's work was little known outside his ...