Cow Tipping and Physics
After the work and power unit has come to a close, it really got me thinking about how such topics would apply to the art of cow tipping, a guilty pleasure of mine. (Not really - I unfortunately do not live near any tippable cows that I know of).
Work is the measure of force times displacement on an object. Let's assume the cow of my choice for tipping weighs 3000N. If I were to not only tip over but also push the cow on the ground, specifically a distance of 1 meter, then that would mean that I exerted 3000 joules of work on the cow. Not a bad workout. Now, after pushing this cow on the ground, I felt pretty powerful. But how powerful exactly was I? Well, let's say that I completed this entire task in 30 seconds. (I had to work diligently to avoid getting caught by Farmer Brown). 3000 joules divided by 30 seconds is equivalent to a value of 100 watts.
So, the next time you and your friends are sneaking around a farm tipping cows, remember to measure the force of the cows, how far you push them, and how long the process takes, so you can find out how much work you exerted, and how powerful you were.
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