energy and work
"Energy is the capacity of a physical system to perform work. Energy exists in several forms such as heat, kinetic or mechanical energy, light, potential energy, electrical, or other forms" (Jones, 2014). Energy is seen throughout frisbee when a person runs, jumps, catches or throws the frisbee. In this section you will find all you need to know about conserving energy to the work performed on a frisbee.
Conservation of energy
Conservation of energy is shown throughout video. Please watch the video below to see how energy changes throughout a throw in frisbee.
I was able to find the conservation of energy throughout the throw once I found the potential energy of the frisbee at maximum height and the kinetic energy of the frisbee right before the frisbee reached the ground. Since at the top of a projectile the frisbee doesn't have kinetic energy and at the bottom of throw the frisbee does not have potential energy I was able to find how much energy was lost to either thermal or sound energy. I knew that some of the energy had to be transferred to thermal or sound as the potential energy at the top of the projectile and the kinetic energy at the end of the throw did not have the same number. Therefore on the way down energy would of had to of been transferred.
Work and power
As soon as a frisbee is thrown it has now been displaced and since the force that made the frisbee become displaced are both in the same direction, the frisbee has now done work. “When a force acts upon an object to cause a displacement of the object, it is said that work was done upon the object.” (Physics Classroom, 2014) Once an object has done work, it now has power. Power is the rate at which work is done. It is the work/time ratio. This allows people to see how much power an object has on it.
I was able to find what work equaled once I; calculated the mass of the frisbee, which I weighed at the beginning of my experiment, found out the acceleration (calculation for acceleration shown in the kinematics page) and found the distance the frisbee travelled, which I calculated when recording my data. Once I found those three variables, I was able to find the force the frisbee was thrown at. Which I found by using the mass of the frisbee multiplied by the acceleration of the frisbee. After I found the force of the frisbee I was able to use the work equation, which I learned in class to calculate how much work the frisbee had done. Work is force multiplied by distance frisbee travelled. The work done by the frisbee ended up being 62.239J.
I was able to calculate the power after calculating work (calculation two images above). Once I calculated work I took the power equation and substituted in work over the time the frisbee was in the air to find the power the frisbee had. The frisbees power was 37.493 Watts.
It is important for frisbee players to understand what work and power are and how they are relatable to the sport, so they can get a thorough understanding of the work they must perform on the frisbee in order to get the certain amount of power on the frisbee. Frisbee players must understand that work has nothing to do with the amount of time a force acts to cause displacement to the frisbee. A slow long pass might do the same amount of work as a short powerful pass as time does, just the short pass will do it in a sufficiently shorter amount of time. Power comes into play when you want to figure out the rate work is being done at on an object. Lets say we had a player threw a pass with a force of 20N that went from 0m/s to 10m/s in 15 seconds. If the same person then threw a frisbee with three times the force they first threw it with then the frisbee could do the same work in one third of the time. That would mean the frisbee would accelerate to 10m/s in five seconds. This means that for the same amount of work, power and time are inversely proportional. The power equation suggests that the more forceful frisbee can do the same amount of work in less time.
It is important for frisbee players to understand what work and power are and how they are relatable to the sport, so they can get a thorough understanding of the work they must perform on the frisbee in order to get the certain amount of power on the frisbee. Frisbee players must understand that work has nothing to do with the amount of time a force acts to cause displacement to the frisbee. A slow long pass might do the same amount of work as a short powerful pass as time does, just the short pass will do it in a sufficiently shorter amount of time. Power comes into play when you want to figure out the rate work is being done at on an object. Lets say we had a player threw a pass with a force of 20N that went from 0m/s to 10m/s in 15 seconds. If the same person then threw a frisbee with three times the force they first threw it with then the frisbee could do the same work in one third of the time. That would mean the frisbee would accelerate to 10m/s in five seconds. This means that for the same amount of work, power and time are inversely proportional. The power equation suggests that the more forceful frisbee can do the same amount of work in less time.
Thermal energy
I was able to find the equilibrium of the frisbee and the asphalt the frisbee landed on after I researched what a frisbee was made out of which I found to be Polyethylene which had a heat capacity of 1250 j/kg°C. I also found that asphalt had a heat capacity of 9.2 x 10^2 j/kg °C. From there since i did not have the right equipment to measure the heat of the frisbee and the asphalt I used hypothetical numbers to use in my equation. I used the mass of the frisbee as my mass number one and one cubic meter for my mass number 2. With all these numbers found it allowed me to calculate the equilibrium between asphalt and polyethylene, which with the hypothetical degrees it started at the equilibrium was 4.063°C.