Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Power in mechanical systems is the combination of forces and movement. In particular, power is the product of a force on an object and the object's velocity, or the product of a torque on a shaft and the shaft's angular velocity. Mechanical power is also described as the time derivative of work.
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 ...
Power is the rate at which energy is generated or consumed and hence is measured in units (e.g. watts) that represent energy per unit time. For example, when a light bulb with a power rating of 100 W is turned on for one hour, the energy used is 100 watt hours (W·h), 0.1 kilowatt hour, or 360 kJ .
The British imperial units and U.S. customary units for both energy and work include the foot-pound force (1.3558 J), the British thermal unit (BTU) which has various values in the region of 1055 J, the horsepower-hour (2.6845 MJ), and the gasoline gallon equivalent (about 120 MJ).
Horsepower (hp) is a unit of measurement of power, or the rate at which work is done, usually in reference to the output of engines or motors. There are many different standards and types of horsepower.
A kilowatt is a unit of power (rate of flow of energy per unit of time). A kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy. Kilowatt per hour would be a rate of change of power flow with time. Work is the amount of energy transferred to a system; power is the rate of delivery of energy. Energy is measured in joules, or watt-seconds.
Kilowatt-hour (kW·h) – corresponds to one kilowatt of power being used over a period of one hour (3.6 MJ). Calorie (cal) – equal to the energy need to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius (~4.184 J). Erg (erg) – unit of energy and mechanical work in the centimetre-gram-second (CGS) system of units (10 −7 J).
PV work is often measured in units of litre-atmospheres where 1 L·atm = 101.325 J. However, the litre-atmosphere is not a recognized unit in the SI system of units, which measures P in pascals (Pa), V in m 3, and PV in joules (J), where 1 J = 1 Pa·m 3. PV work is an important topic in chemical thermodynamics.