Talk:Work (physics)/Archives/2010/July

The point where the force is applied to the body

I cannot recall if the point on which a force acts has a special name in English. It would not seem so from Wiki articles on force, torque or work, though it does have in some other languages. Therefore, let me call it "grip". The work of a force F is integral of Fcosα along the path of its "grip", where α is the angle between vectors F and v ("grip" velocity). For constant F and α, obviously W=Fscosα (including W=Fs for α=0), where s is the length of path of the "grip", which does not necessarily have to be rectilinear (so I do not see why displacement should be the word of choice). And there is no real need to introduce dot product before this point (and then dr might be more suitable for differential displacement vector, if s is path length). Only if the force acts on a particle, or the body moves translationally, there is no need for reference to "grip". And only then the work equals the change in translational kinetic energy, mv²/2. But do you want to disregard the fact that the force accelerating a body (i.e. its center of mass) with the "grip" outside of the center of mass may be doing additional work giving it rotational kinetic energy as well? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.125.14.12 (talk) 01:28, 18 July 2010 (UTC)