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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.
Work, a function of energy, is force times distance. = This says that the work is equal to the line integral of the force F along a path C; for details see the mechanical work article. Work and thus energy is frame dependent. For example, consider a ball being hit by a bat.
The photoelectric work function is the minimum photon energy required to liberate an electron from a substance, in the photoelectric effect. If the photon's energy is greater than the substance's work function, photoelectric emission occurs and the electron is liberated from the surface. Similar to the thermionic case described above, the ...
The work done on the system is defined and measured by changes in mechanical or quasi-mechanical variables external to the system. Physically, adiabatic transfer of energy as work requires the existence of adiabatic enclosures. For instance, in Joule's experiment, the initial system is a tank of water with a paddle wheel inside.
Energy is a scalar quantity, and the mechanical energy of a system is the sum of the potential energy (which is measured by the position of the parts of the system) and the kinetic energy (which is also called the energy of motion): [1] [2] = +
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Internal energy is a principal property of the thermodynamic state, while heat and work are modes of energy transfer by which a process may change this state. A change of internal energy of a system may be achieved by any combination of heat added or removed and work performed on or by the system.