Mechanical work

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A baseball pitcher does work on the ball by transferring energy into it.

In physics, mechanical work is the amount of energy transferred by a force. Like energy, it is a scalar quantity, with SI units of joules. Heat conduction is not considered to be a form of work, since there is no macroscopically measurable force, only microscopic forces occurring in atomic collisions. In the 1830s, the French mathematician Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis coined the term work for the product of force and distance.^[1]

[change] References

1. ↑ Jammer, Max (1957). Concepts of Force. Dover Publications, Inc.. ISBN 0-486-40689-X. 

[change] Other websites

• Work - a chapter from an online textbook
• Work, Power, Kinetic Energy on Project PHYSNET

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