Student Worksheet Name_________________

This assignment is designed to help you prepare for our exploration of human horse power. Please answer the following questions so that you will be able to make contributions to our brainstorming session tomorrow.

1) What is the definition of power?

2) What is the definition of work?

3) What force is a human overcoming when they raise themselves up off the floor at a nice steady speed? How could we estimate this force?

4) Suppose we wanted to push up quickly off the ground. Would this take less force or more than #3? Why?

5) Write out an equation in words to describe all the forces that would be needed to push up quickly off the ground.

6) How could you estimate the numerical value of each force ? What information would we need to know?

7) If we could come up with an estimate of the force the person is exerting, How could we estimate the work that they did?

8) Write an equation in words to represent the work done.(hint: use some of the words from #5 & #6)

9) How could we estimate the power output if we knew the work that was done?

10) Write a word equation for the power output using your answer from #8&#9.

11) We will be using a motion detector to measure horsepower. This detector allows us to track the distance vs time for the subject. The program, MacMotion, automatically calculates velocity and acceleration from the distance data. These quantities can be used in any calculations and displayed as a graphable quantity in the program. Which of these quantities would be useful in determining force?

12) Draw a diagram of a stick figure doing a pushup. Draw in all the forces involved (check #3,#4, #5)