This video defines work, energy, and power and describes how these concepts are related.
Students will learn about the equations for work, kinetic energy, gravitational potential energy, spring potential energy, and average power.
The video also explains what a system is and compares non-conservative and conservative systems, specifically highlighting the example of a simple pendulum.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The video animations demonstrate key concepts and display important equations and definitions.
Students can see how mathematical concepts in trigonometry and calculus relate to physics and the real world.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should already be familiar with forces including applied, gravitational, frictional, and spring forces.
The last 30 seconds of the video are credits and sponsors.
Many high school students will not be familiar with the calculus concept of integrals, which is mentioned in the video.
Differentiation
This video can be used in math classes to apply vectors or trigonometry functions to real-world calculations.
Understanding the basics of work, energy, and power is an important precursor to learning about energy sources, which is a key issue in climate change.
Students can discuss Earth as a system and how climate change is impacting the energy flow in this system.
Scientist Notes
The video simplifies the concept of power, energy, and work and provides a basic illustration of how energy works in a system. There is a high confidence to use this resource for teaching.
Standards
Mathematics
Geometric Reasoning and Measurement (K-12)
HS.GM.D.12 Apply sine, cosine, and tangent ratios, and the Pythagorean Theorem, to solve problems in authentic contexts.
Science
PS3: Energy
HS.PS3.1 Create a computational model to calculate the change in the energy of one component in a system when the change in energy of the other component(s) and energy flows in and out of the system are known.
HS.PS3.2 Develop and use models to illustrate that energy at the macroscopic scale can be accounted for as a combination of energy associated with the motion of particles (objects) and energy associated with the relative position of particles (objects).
