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Calculating gravitational potential energy
Mathematical expressions, which quantify how the stored energy in a system depends on its configuration (e.g. relative positions of charged particles, compression of a spring) and how kinetic energy depends on mass and speed, allow the concept of conservation of energy to be used to predict and describe system behavior. Created by Sal Khan.
Want to join the conversation?
- If a pulley have 2 50kg both on each side doesn't that mean they will balance each side out.(8 votes)
- why is g positive and not negative?(2 votes)
- The direction doesnt matter in this context, as potential energy itself is not a vector quantity. We just want to know the work done, not direction of it(1 vote)
- @3:22Sal said "what is the force you're going to have to apply? Well, the force you're going to have to apply is going to be the weight of the object" if Should we apply more force than its weight to move from one point to another ?(1 vote)
- So what is the basic equation then?(1 vote)
- PE=mass * gravity * height
I also learned PE= force* distance or height
Force in this case is weight(1 vote)
- why does g equal to 9.8?(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] In previous videos, we have introduced the idea of energy as the capacity to do work and we have talked about
multiple types of energies. We've talked about kinetic
energy, energy due to motion. We've talked about potential energy, which is energy by virtue of position. And when we're talking
about potential energy, we're talking about it relative
to some other position. And in particular, in this video, we're going to talk about
gravitational potential energy, which is potential energy due to position in a gravitational field. So let's say that this is
the surface of the earth. Let's say that I have a five
kilogram mass right over here, and let's say that it is 10 meters above the surface of the earth. My question to you is how
much more potential energy does it have in this position than when it is in this position, when it is sitting on
the surface of the earth, 10 meters lower? Pause the video and try
to think about that. All right, now let's
work on this together. So our gravitational potential
energy is going to be equal to our mass times lowercase g, which you can view as the constant for earth's gravitational field
near the surface of earth. And the reason why I say
near the surface of earth is as you get further
and further from earth, this thing could actually change, but near the surface of the earth, we assume that it is roughly constant, and then you multiply
that times your height. So calculating this is
pretty straightforward as long as you know what g is. G, we can approximate it as
9.8 meters per second squared. So when you multiply all of this out, this is going to be equal to your mass, which is five kilograms, times the gravitational field constant, so times 9.8 meters per second squared, times your height, which in this situation is 10 meters, so times 10 meters. And so this is going to be
equal to five times 9.8 is 49, times 10 is 490. We have kilograms, and then we have meters times meters, so times meters squared
per second squared. And these might seem like strange units, but you might recognize this as also the units of force times distance, which we could also
express in terms of joules. So this is 490 joules, which is our units both for
energy and our unit for work. Now, let's make sure that
this is intuitive sense. Well, one way to think about it is how much work would it take
to go from here to here? Well, you're going to be lifting
it a distance of 10 meters, and as you're lifting it
a distance of 10 meters, what is the force you're
going to have to apply? Well, the force you're
going to have to apply is going to be the weight of the object. The weight is its mass times
the gravitational field. So in order to put it in that
position from the ground, you're going to have to do
its weight times the height, or 490 joules of work. And so you can do 490 joules
of work to get it there and then you can think about it as that energy being stored this way. And now it can then do that work. How could it do that work? Well, there's a bunch
of ways you could do it. You could have this attached
to maybe a pulley of some kind and then if it had another
weight right over here, and let's just, for simplicity,
assume it has the same mass, well, if you let this
first purple mass go, it's going to go down. And if you assume that this pulley is completely frictionless, this mass is going to
be lifted by 10 meters. And so if you have a five kilogram mass that is lifted by 10 meters in
Earth's gravitational field, near the surface of the earth, you would have just
done 490 joules of work. So hopefully this makes sense why you're just really taking the weight of the object times its height. And hopefully it also makes sense that it then has the capacity
to do that amount of work. And in this case, we said
relative to sitting on the ground.