The awe-inspiring Great Pyramid of Cheops was built more than 4500 years ago. Its square base, originally 230 m on a side, covered 13.1 acres, and it was 146 m high, with a mass of about 7×109 kg. (The pyramid’s dimensions are slightly different today due to quarrying and some sagging.) Historians estimate that 20,000 workers spent 20 years to construct it, working 12-hour days, 330 days per year. (a) Calculate the gravitational potential energy stored in the pyramid, given its center of mass is at one-fourth its height. (b) Only a fraction of the workers lifted blocks; most were involved in support services such as building ramps (as shown), bringing food and water, and hauling blocks to the site. Calculate the efficiency of the workers who did the lifting, assuming there were 1000 of them and they consumed food energy at the rate of 300 kcal/h. What does your answer imply about how much of their work went into block-lifting, versus how much work went into friction and lifting and lowering their own bodies? (c) Calculate the mass of food that had to be supplied each day, assuming that the average worker required 3600 kcal per day and that their diet was 5% protein, 60% carbohydrate, and 35% fat. (These proportions neglect the mass of bulk and nondigestible materials consumed.)
Kinematics
A machine is a device that accepts energy in some available form and utilizes it to do a type of work. Energy, work, or power has to be transferred from one mechanical part to another to run a machine. While the transfer of energy between two machine parts, those two parts experience a relative motion with each other. Studying such relative motions is termed kinematics.
Kinetic Energy and Work-Energy Theorem
In physics, work is the product of the net force in direction of the displacement and the magnitude of this displacement or it can also be defined as the energy transfer of an object when it is moved for a distance due to the forces acting on it in the direction of displacement and perpendicular to the displacement which is called the normal force. Energy is the capacity of any object doing work. The SI unit of work is joule and energy is Joule. This principle follows the second law of Newton's law of motion where the net force causes the acceleration of an object. The force of gravity which is downward force and the normal force acting on an object which is perpendicular to the object are equal in magnitude but opposite to the direction, so while determining the net force, these two components cancel out. The net force is the horizontal component of the force and in our explanation, we consider everything as frictionless surface since friction should also be calculated while called the work-energy component of the object. The two most basics of energy classification are potential energy and kinetic energy. There are various kinds of kinetic energy like chemical, mechanical, thermal, nuclear, electrical, radiant energy, and so on. The work is done when there is a change in energy and it mainly depends on the application of force and movement of the object. Let us say how much work is needed to lift a 5kg ball 5m high. Work is mathematically represented as Force ×Displacement. So it will be 5kg times the gravitational constant on earth and the distance moved by the object. Wnet=Fnet times Displacement.
The awe-inspiring Great Pyramid of Cheops was built more than 4500 years ago. Its square base, originally 230 m on a side, covered 13.1 acres, and it was 146 m high, with a mass of about 7×109 kg. (The pyramid’s dimensions are slightly different today due to quarrying and some sagging.) Historians estimate that 20,000 workers spent 20 years to construct it, working 12-hour days, 330 days per year. (a) Calculate the gravitational potential energy stored in the pyramid, given its center of mass is at one-fourth its height. (b) Only a fraction of the workers lifted blocks; most were involved in support services such as building ramps (as shown), bringing food and water, and hauling blocks to the site. Calculate the efficiency of the workers who did the lifting, assuming there were 1000 of them and they consumed food energy at the rate of 300 kcal/h. What does your answer imply about how much of their work went into block-lifting, versus how much work went into friction and lifting and lowering their own bodies? (c) Calculate the mass of food that had to be supplied each day, assuming that the average worker required 3600 kcal per day and that their diet was 5% protein, 60% carbohydrate, and 35% fat. (These proportions neglect the mass of bulk and nondigestible materials consumed.)
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