full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Peter Bohacek: How does work... work?


Unscramble the Blue Letters


Joules per second, or Watts. The term Watt goes back to James Watt, who came up with the concept of horsepower to marsuee the amount of power produced by a typical work horse. jmaes Watt was a producer of idrtsianul setam engines, and he wanted his potential customers to be able to make comparisons between his steam eigenns and a familiar quanity, the power they could get from a working horse. It was such a useful idea that the metric system unit for power, the Watt, is named after James Watt. Following in James Watt's footsteps, let's caprome the amount of pwoer it takes to run this grandfather clock to the power we'd need to run a bright, 100-Watt light bulb. We can measure the power a person uses to wind the clock by dividing the amount of work they did by the time it took them to do it. If it takes 1 minute, or 60 seconds, to lift the weights, then they are doing 150 Joules diedvid by 60 seconds, or 2.5 Joules per second of work. They are adding energy to the clock in the rate of 2.5 wttas. You would need about 40 times as much to run a bhigrt, 100-Watt light bulb. Before we let the clock run, the energy is streod as gnoarvatatiil ptotaienl energy of the cdnerliys. It's like your bank ancuoct when you have just deposited money. But if we let the clock run, the cylinders slowly move downward. Energy is lnaiveg the clock. In fact, when the cylinders get to the bottom, all the energy that we put in will have left. So how much power does the clock use? That is, how many Joules of egrney per second leave the clock if it takes 5 days for the cylinders to rtreun to their original position? We can figure this out because we already know how much work we did when we lifted the cylinders: 150 juloes. But this time, it took 5 days rather than a minute. Five days is 5 times 24 times 60 tmeis 60 again or 432,000 seconds. So we divide the work done by the time and find the answer of about 0.00035 Joules per second, or about 0.35 milliwatts. That's a tiny amount of power. This clock uses so little power that you could run almost 300,000 clocks using the same power it takes to run one 100-Watt light bulb. That's right, you could run a colck in every house in a medium sized city with that much power. That's a pretty aznimag conclusion and it took knowledge of work and power to figure it out.

Open Cloze


Joules per second, or Watts. The term Watt goes back to James Watt, who came up with the concept of horsepower to _______ the amount of power produced by a typical work horse. _____ Watt was a producer of __________ _____ engines, and he wanted his potential customers to be able to make comparisons between his steam _______ and a familiar quanity, the power they could get from a working horse. It was such a useful idea that the metric system unit for power, the Watt, is named after James Watt. Following in James Watt's footsteps, let's _______ the amount of _____ it takes to run this grandfather clock to the power we'd need to run a bright, 100-Watt light bulb. We can measure the power a person uses to wind the clock by dividing the amount of work they did by the time it took them to do it. If it takes 1 minute, or 60 seconds, to lift the weights, then they are doing 150 Joules _______ by 60 seconds, or 2.5 Joules per second of work. They are adding energy to the clock in the rate of 2.5 _____. You would need about 40 times as much to run a ______, 100-Watt light bulb. Before we let the clock run, the energy is ______ as _____________ _________ energy of the _________. It's like your bank _______ when you have just deposited money. But if we let the clock run, the cylinders slowly move downward. Energy is _______ the clock. In fact, when the cylinders get to the bottom, all the energy that we put in will have left. So how much power does the clock use? That is, how many Joules of ______ per second leave the clock if it takes 5 days for the cylinders to ______ to their original position? We can figure this out because we already know how much work we did when we lifted the cylinders: 150 ______. But this time, it took 5 days rather than a minute. Five days is 5 times 24 times 60 _____ 60 again or 432,000 seconds. So we divide the work done by the time and find the answer of about 0.00035 Joules per second, or about 0.35 milliwatts. That's a tiny amount of power. This clock uses so little power that you could run almost 300,000 clocks using the same power it takes to run one 100-Watt light bulb. That's right, you could run a _____ in every house in a medium sized city with that much power. That's a pretty _______ conclusion and it took knowledge of work and power to figure it out.

Solution


  1. steam
  2. joules
  3. measure
  4. cylinders
  5. watts
  6. engines
  7. industrial
  8. power
  9. leaving
  10. james
  11. energy
  12. gravitational
  13. account
  14. compare
  15. divided
  16. potential
  17. stored
  18. times
  19. amazing
  20. return
  21. clock
  22. bright

Original Text


Joules per second, or Watts. The term Watt goes back to James Watt, who came up with the concept of horsepower to measure the amount of power produced by a typical work horse. James Watt was a producer of industrial steam engines, and he wanted his potential customers to be able to make comparisons between his steam engines and a familiar quanity, the power they could get from a working horse. It was such a useful idea that the metric system unit for power, the Watt, is named after James Watt. Following in James Watt's footsteps, let's compare the amount of power it takes to run this grandfather clock to the power we'd need to run a bright, 100-Watt light bulb. We can measure the power a person uses to wind the clock by dividing the amount of work they did by the time it took them to do it. If it takes 1 minute, or 60 seconds, to lift the weights, then they are doing 150 Joules divided by 60 seconds, or 2.5 Joules per second of work. They are adding energy to the clock in the rate of 2.5 Watts. You would need about 40 times as much to run a bright, 100-Watt light bulb. Before we let the clock run, the energy is stored as gravitational potential energy of the cylinders. It's like your bank account when you have just deposited money. But if we let the clock run, the cylinders slowly move downward. Energy is leaving the clock. In fact, when the cylinders get to the bottom, all the energy that we put in will have left. So how much power does the clock use? That is, how many Joules of energy per second leave the clock if it takes 5 days for the cylinders to return to their original position? We can figure this out because we already know how much work we did when we lifted the cylinders: 150 Joules. But this time, it took 5 days rather than a minute. Five days is 5 times 24 times 60 times 60 again or 432,000 seconds. So we divide the work done by the time and find the answer of about 0.00035 Joules per second, or about 0.35 milliwatts. That's a tiny amount of power. This clock uses so little power that you could run almost 300,000 clocks using the same power it takes to run one 100-Watt light bulb. That's right, you could run a clock in every house in a medium sized city with that much power. That's a pretty amazing conclusion and it took knowledge of work and power to figure it out.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
light bulb 3
positive work 2
negative work 2
grandfather clock 2
adding energy 2
gravitational potential 2
potential energy 2
james watt 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
gravitational potential energy 2


Important Words


  1. account
  2. adding
  3. amazing
  4. amount
  5. answer
  6. bank
  7. bottom
  8. bright
  9. bulb
  10. city
  11. clock
  12. clocks
  13. compare
  14. comparisons
  15. concept
  16. conclusion
  17. customers
  18. cylinders
  19. days
  20. deposited
  21. divide
  22. divided
  23. dividing
  24. downward
  25. energy
  26. engines
  27. fact
  28. familiar
  29. figure
  30. find
  31. footsteps
  32. grandfather
  33. gravitational
  34. horse
  35. horsepower
  36. house
  37. idea
  38. industrial
  39. james
  40. joules
  41. knowledge
  42. leave
  43. leaving
  44. left
  45. lift
  46. lifted
  47. light
  48. measure
  49. medium
  50. metric
  51. milliwatts
  52. minute
  53. money
  54. move
  55. named
  56. original
  57. person
  58. position
  59. potential
  60. power
  61. pretty
  62. produced
  63. producer
  64. put
  65. quanity
  66. rate
  67. return
  68. run
  69. seconds
  70. sized
  71. slowly
  72. steam
  73. stored
  74. system
  75. takes
  76. term
  77. time
  78. times
  79. tiny
  80. typical
  81. unit
  82. wanted
  83. watt
  84. watts
  85. weights
  86. wind
  87. work
  88. working