Welcome back.
At the end of the last video, I left you
with a bit of a question.
We had a situation where we had a 1 kilogram object.
This is the 1 kilogram object, which I've drawn neater in
this video.
That is 1 kilogram.
And we're on earth, and I need to mention that because
gravity is different from planet to planet.
But as I mentioned, I'm holding it.
Let's say I'm holding it 10 meters above the ground.
So this distance or this height is 10 meters.
And we're assuming the acceleration of gravity, which
we also write as just g, let's assume it's just 10 meters per
second squared just for the simplicity of the math instead
of the 9.8.
So what we learned in the last video is that the potential
energy in this situation, the potential energy, which equals
m times g times h is equal to the mass is 1 kilogram times
the acceleration of gravity, which is 10
meters per second squared.
I'm not going to write the units down just to save space,
although you should do this when you do it on your test.
And then the height is 10 meters.
And the units, if you work them all out, it's in newton
meters or joules and so it's equal to 100 joules.
That's the potential energy when I'm holding it up there.
And I asked you, well when I let go, what happens?
Well the block obviously will start falling.
And not only falling, it will start accelerating to the
ground at 10 meters per second squared roughly.
And right before it hits the ground-- let me draw that in
brown for ground-- right before the object hits the
ground or actually right when it hits the ground, what will
be the potential energy of the object?
Well it has no height, right?
Potential energy is mgh.
The mass and the acceleration of gravity stay the same, but
the height is 0.
So they're all multiplied by each other.
So down here, the potential energy is going
to be equal to 0.
And I told you in the last video that we have the law of
conservation of energy.
That energy is conserved.
It cannot be created or destroyed.
It can just be converted from one form to another.
But I'm just showing you, this object had 100 joules of
energy or, in this case,
gravitational potential energy.
And down here, it has no energy.
Or at least it has no gravitational potential
energy, and that's the key.
That gravitational potential energy was converted into
something else.
And that something else it was converted
into is kinetic energy.
And in this case, since it has no potential energy, all of
that previous potential energy, all of this 100 joules
that it has up here is now going to be converted into
kinetic energy.
And we can use that information to figure out its
velocity right before it hits the ground.
So how do we do that?
Well what's the formula for kinetic energy?
And we solved it two videos ago, and hopefully it
shouldn't be too much of a mystery to you.
It's something good to memorize, but it's also good
to know how we got it and go back two videos if you forgot.
So first we know that all the potential energy was converted
into kinetic energy.
We had 100 joules of potential energy, so we're still going
to have 100 joules, but now all of it's going to be
kinetic energy.
And kinetic energy is 1/2 mv squared.
So we know that 1/2 mv squared, or the kinetic
energy, is now going to equal 100 joules.
What's the mass?
The mass is 1.
And we can solve for v now.
1/2 v squared equals 100 joules, and v
squared is equal to 200.
And then we get v is equal to square root of 200, which is
something over 14.
We can get the exact number.
Let's see, 200 square root, 14.1 roughly.
The velocity is going to be 14.1 meters per
second squared downwards.
Right before the object touches the ground.
Right before it touches the ground.
And you might say, well Sal that's nice and everything.
We learned a little bit about energy.
I could have solved that or hopefully you could have
solved that problem just using your kinematics formula.
So what's the whole point of introducing
these concepts of energy?
And I will now show you.
So let's say they have the same 1 kilogram object up here
and it's 10 meters in the air, but I'm going to change things
a little bit.
Let me see if I can competently erase all of this.
Nope, that's not what I wanted to do.
OK, there you go.
I'm trying my best to erase this, all of this stuff.
OK.
So I have the same object.
It's still 10 meters in the air and I'll
write that in a second.
And I'm just holding it there and I'm still going to drop
it, but something interesting is going to happen.
Instead of it going straight down, it's actually going to
drop on this ramp of ice.
The ice has lumps on it.
And then this is the bottom.
This is the ground down here.
This is the ground.
So what's going to happen this time?
I'm still 10 meters in the air, so let me draw that.
That's still 10 meters.
I should switch colors just so not everything is ice.
So that's still 10 meters, but instead of the object going
straight down now, it's going to go down here and then start
sliding, right?
It's going to go sliding along this hill.
And then at this point it's going to be going really fast
in the horizontal direction.
And right now we don't know how fast.
And just using our kinematics formula, this would have been
a really tough formula.
This would have been difficult.
I mean you could have attempted it and it actually
would have taken calculus because the angle of the slope
changes continuously.
We don't even know the formula for the angle of the slope.
You would have had to break it out into vectors.
You would have to do all sorts of complicated things.
This would have been a nearly impossible problem.
But using energy, we can actually figure out what the
velocity of this object is at this point.
And we use the same idea.
Here we have 100 joules of potential energy.
We just figured that out.
Down here, what's the height above the ground?
Well the height is 0.
So all the potential energy has disappeared.
And just like in the previous situation, all of the
potential energy is now converted into kinetic energy.
And so what is that kinetic energy going to equal?
It's going to be equal to the initial potential energy.
So here the kinetic energy is equal to 100 joules.
And that equals 1/2 mv squared, just
like we just solved.
And if you solve for v, the mass is 1 kilogram.
So the velocity in the horizontal direction will be,
if you solve for it, 14.1 meters per second.
Instead of going straight down, now it's going to be
going in the horizontal to the right.
And the reason why I said it was ice is because I wanted
this to be frictionless and I didn't want any energy lost to
heat or anything like that.
And you might say OK Sal, that's kind of interesting.
And you kind of got the same number for the velocity than
if I just dropped the object straight down.
And that's interesting.
But what else can this do for me?
And this is where it's really cool.
Not only can I figure out the velocity when all of the
potential energy has disappeared, but I can figure
out the velocity of any point-- and this is
fascinating-- along this slide.
So let's say when the box is sliding down here, so let's
say the box is at this point.
It changes colors too as it falls.
So this is the 1 kilogram box, right?
It falls and it slides down here.
And let's say at this point it's height above the ground
is 5 meters.
So what's its potential energy here?
So let's just write something.
All of the energy is conserved, right?
So the initial potential energy plus the initial
kinetic energy is equal to the final potential energy plus
the final kinetic energy.
I'm just saying energy is conserved here.
Up here, what's the initial total energy in the system?
Well the potential energy is 100 and the kinetic energy is
0 because it's stationary.
I haven't dropped it.
I haven't let go of it yet.
It's just stationary.
So the initial energy is going to be equal to 100 joules.
That's cause this is 0 and this is 100.
So the initial energy is 100 joules.
At this point right here, what's the potential energy?
Well we're 5 meters up, so mass times
gravity times height.
Mass is 1, times gravity, 10 meters per second squared.
Times height, times 5.
So it's 50 joules.
That's our potential energy at this point.
And then we must have some kinetic energy with the
velocity going roughly in that direction.
Plus our kinetic energy at this point.
And we know that no energy was destroyed.
It's just converted.
So we know the total energy still has to be 100 joules.
So essentially what happened, and if we solve for this--
it's very easy, subtract 50 from both sides-- we know that
the kinetic energy is now also going to
be equal to 50 joules.
So what happened?
Halfway down, essentially half of the potential energy got
converted to kinetic energy.
And we can use this information that the kinetic
energy is 50 joules to figure out the
velocity at this point.
1/2 mv squared is equal to 50.
The mass is 1.
Multiply both sides by 2.
You get v squared is equal to 100.
The velocity is 10 meters per second along
this crazy, icy slide.
And that is something that I would have challenged you to
solve using traditional kinematics formulas,
especially considering that we don't know really much about
the surface of this slide.
And even if we did, that would have been a million times
harder than just using the law of conservation of energy and
realizing that at this point, half the potential energy is
now kinetic energy and it's going along the
direction of the slide.
I will see you in the next video.