Lecture 12

Conservative and Non-Conservative Forces, Gravitational Potential

Energy, Conservation of Mechanical Energy

Conservative and non-conservative forces

As we learn to relate energy, work and forces with each other, it is important to realize
that some forces do work on objects in a very special way, such that the work done in one
direction can be recovered going in the opposite direction. For example, in the problem of
free fall (neglecting air drag) we have already studied, an object is thrown upward at a
certain initial speed. It reaches a maximum height where its velocity is zero and then
starts to descend with negative velocity. Clearly the body has lost all its kinetic energy
once it has reached the maximum height, because it has zero velocity. However, as the
objects falls back, when it reaches the ground again its speed is identical to its initial
speed. What happened is that on the way up the force of gravity does a negative work on
the object, while on the way down it does a positive work, giving back to the object the
same energy it had taken away. Forces like this are called conservative, because their
work is never wasted, it can always be recovered. Forces that are not conservative, whose
work cannot be recovered, are called nonconservative. The best examples are friction
and air drag. Nonconservative forces tend to disperse their work into forms that cannot be
recovered by simply reversing the motion, such as heat and sound.

We can better define conservative forces by considering the motion of an object between
two points:

A force is conservative if the work it does moving an object between two points is the
same for any path taken between the two points.

If a force does not obey this condition it is then called nonconservative. It is easy to see
that friction does not satisfy this condition, because the longer the path between two
points the more work is used to move the object. An interesting example is to move an
object from point A to point B and then back to point A. If we consider the work done by
a conservative force, we can easily see it must be zero, because the object ends up in A
where it started, and since the work done must be independent of the path taken, and one
possible path is to never move from A, clearly the work must be zero. Which also mean
that the work to go from B to A must be the same, but with opposite sign, than the work
done to go from A to B. So you can easily see that this definition really means that the
work done in one direction can be recovered on the way back. With friction, instead, the
work is zero if the object never moves from A, but it is certainly nonzero (always
negative) if we move the object away from A and then bring it back to A.

It is useful to recast the work-energy theorem in a new way based on the distinction of
conservative and nonconservative forces. The theorem was:
W = ΔKE

Now we can rewrite this as:

WNC + WC = ΔKE

because the net work is the sum of the work of conservative and nonconservative forces.

Gravitational Potential Energy

We have seen that the work done by a conservative force to move an object from point A
to point B can be recovered going back from point B to point A. In other words, if the
force does a negative work going from A to B, the object has lost kinetic energy, but it
can recover the exact amount of kinetic energy going back from B to A. Since we know
that potentially that energy can be recovered by going back, we can think of that loss of
kinetic energy as being stored energy, rather than lost energy, and we call it potential
energy, because it is energy can could be potentially recovered as kinetic energy, by
simply going back to point A.

So the concept of potential energy is just another way of looking at the work done by
conservative forces. We will consider two types of potential energy: the gravitational
potential energy and the spring potential energy. For now we will discuss only the
gravitational potential energy.

As we introduce the concept of gravitational potential energy, you will now see how
useful conservative forces can be. Imagine you wanted to compute the work done by
gravity on an object with a very complicated trajectory. That would require a lot of
calculations. However, since gravity is conservative, we only need to know the initial and
final positions, the precise path in between is irrelevant.

The potential energy acquired by an object is simply the negative of the work done
by the conservative force, so we can calculate the gravitational potential energy as the
work done by gravity by considering for example an object falling from a height yi to a
lower level yf . With the usual reference frame where the y-axis is vertical and pointing
upwards, yi > yf and since the work is positive (gravity and displacement both point
down), the work done by gravity on the falling object must be:

WG = m g (yi - yf)

Remember that our definition of kinetic energy was inspired by an expression relating the
work done by a force on an object to the object velocity. In the same way, we will now
define the gravitational potential energy inspired by a relation between the work done by
gravity on an object and the object position (we know that the potential energy must
depend only on position, because the force is conservative). If we rewrite the expression
above by simply factoring out the minus sign we get:

WG = - m g (yf – yi) = - (m g yf – m g yi)

which shows that the negative of the work is equal to the difference in the quantity
(mgy). This quantity is therefore a good candidate for the definition of gravitational
potential energy:

PE = m g y

which is an energy so it is measured in Joule.

So we can re-expressed the formula above as:

WG = - (PEf - PEi ) = ΔPE

If we then consider the work-energy theorem

WNC + WC = ΔKE

in the case where the only conservative force is gravity, we can of course use the concept
of gravitational potential energy instead of WC :

WNC + WG = ΔKE ⇒ WNC - ΔPE = ΔKE

⇒ WNC = ΔPE + ΔKE = (PEf - PEi ) + (KEf - KEi )

meaning that the work done by nonconservative forces is equal to the change in potential
energy plus the change in kinetic energy, or, in other words, that if the sum of potential
energy and kinetic energy is not conserved (constant), its changed must have gone into
wasted energy:

(PE +KE)f – (PE + KE)i = WNC

This relation is true for any conservative forces, not only for gravity.

Note: In the definition of gravitational potential energy we have used y as the height from
Earth surface. In reality the origin of the y-axis is not important. We could use any level
as the zero level to measure the gravitational potential energy, because in all the problems
we only care about differences in gravitational potential energies, which do not depend
on the choice of the reference level.
Conservation of Mechanical Energy

As we said when we introduced it, the concept of energy is very powerful in physics
because energy is a conserved quantity, which is a property that can be easily used in
solving problems of mechanics, especially because the energy is also a scalar quantity (a
number), so easy to use. We have seen that energy can take different forms, such as
kinetic energy, potential energy, or can be dissipated away through the work of non-
conservative forces. If non-conservative forces are absent (for example if there is no
friction or air drag), then there is no work done by such forces, WNC = 0, and so the work-
energy theorem simply tells us that the total energy, given by the sum of kinetic and
potential energy, is conserved:

(PE +KE)f = (PE + KE)i

The sum of potential and kinetic energy is also called mechanical energy, E = PE + KE.

In summary:

In any isolated system of objects interacting only through conservative forces the total
mechanical energy of the system is the same at all times.

If the only force is gravity, then we can write:

m vi2 / 2 + m g yi = m vf2 / 2 + m g yf

which is a very useful formula for solving problems involving only gravity.

Example:

The powerful grasshopper

What is the magnitude of the initial velocity of a bug jumping at 45 degrees from the
ground and reaching a maximum height of 1m.

Solution:

As you will see, this problem can be solved without any knowledge of the mass of the
bug. The solution is a simple application of the conservation of mechanical energy (we
assume no air drag):

(PE +KE)f = (PE + KE)i ⇒ m g yf + m vf2 / 2 = m g yi + m vi2 / 2

We can chose the ground level as the reference level for the gravitational potential
energy, so yi = 0 and the initial potential energy is zero. And we can also write
vf = vx,f

because the y component of the final velocity is zero (at the maximum height). Finally,
we could substitute yf = 1m, but it is better to make the numerical substitution at the very
end, apart from values that are zero, in which case the substitution simplifies the algebra:

m g yf + m vx,f2 / 2 = m vi2 / 2

we then multiply by 2/m:

2 g yf + vx,f2 = vi2

where we still have two unknowns: vx,f and vi . However, since the initial velocity forms
45 degrees with the ground, we can write:

vx,i = vi sin(45°) = vi / 21/2

And since there is no force in the x direction:

vx,f = vx,i = vi / 21/2

which we put in the energy conservation equation:

2 g yf + vi2 / 2 = vi2 ⇒ 2 g yf = vi2 / 2

⇒ vi = 2 (g yf)1/2 = 2 *(9.8*1)1/2 = 6.26 m/s

A pretty respectable speed!