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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread
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To: HPilot who wrote (19976)2/1/2008 3:15:43 PM
From: neolib  Read Replies (1) of 36917
 
You are making progress. Work is Force x Distance. Not mass x distance.

How much work it takes to move a given mass a given distance depends 100% on the forces opposing that move. Those forces MAY or MAY NOT scale with the mass. If you are in zero friction (think air bearing surface, or in orbit) than the total work is merely the accel and deaccel, and if you do that VERY slowly, that approaches zero in the limit (independent of the distance!).

So the two main sources of work in moving the mass are 1) accel/deaccel, and 2) friction.

Which is why talking about work in units of mass and distance is nonsense. But talking about work in units of force and distance is correct.
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