How much work is friction doing?
You lament that you are pushing the box of potatoes with a force of about 30 pounds for a ridiculous distance just so that your Uncle Bob can cook up some potatoes. You realized that you should have done something to decrease the friction between the ground and the box of potatoes, such as using a cart with wheels, because that would have made your life easier.
Why would decreasing the friction decrease the amount of work you would need to do to push the box of potatoes 80 meters at a constant speed?
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
1 solution
If you add up all the work done by all the forces it is zero and does not change. If you are pushing the box of potatoes at a constant speed, the force of friction and the horizontal applied force must be equal in magnitude, therefor the work done by friction and the work done by the applied force as the box moves must also be equal.