Lectures on Physics has been derived from Benjamin Crowell's Light and Matter series of free introductory textbooks on physics. See the editorial for more information....

Dragging a refrigerator at constant velocity

Newton's first law tells us that the total force on the refrigerator must be zero: your force is canceling the floor's kinetic frictional force. The workkinetic energy theorem is therefore true but useless. It tells us that there is zero total force on the refrigerator, and that the refrigerator's kinetic energy doesn't change.

The second theorem tells us that the work you do equals your hand's force on the refrigerator multiplied by the distance traveled. Since we know the floor has no source of energy, the only way for the floor and refrigerator to gain energy is from the work you do. We can thus calculate the total heat dissipated by friction in the refrigerator and the floor.

Note that there is no way to find how much of the heat is dissipated in the floor and how much in the refrigerator.




Last Update: 2009-06-21