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Can I set my own bindings?
Walt wrote:
VtSkier wrote: Walt wrote: ... torque is force applied at some distance, Yes, but isn't that what WORK/ENERGY is? Work is force acting though a distance: W = F(dot)d. With torque, the force is perpendicular to the distance vector , so when you compute the dot product you get zero. Torque, like distance and force, is a vector quantity while energy (work) is a scalar. To compute torque, you take the vector cross product of force and position vector: T = F x d. This gives a vector, unlike the dot product above which gives a scalar. To say a vector (torque) is equal to a scalar (energy) is like saying Wednesday is equal to cheese. It makes no sense. //Walt Whether or not torque and work are directly equivalent, they are use interchangeably in many ways. By adding the element of time to work we get the concept of "horsepower". When James Watt observed that a horse, on average, could lift (I'm sure he used "lift" in some way so that he didn't have (much) friction to deal with) 550 pounds one foot in one second, he decided that moving 550 pound, one foot in one second would be a measure of power called "One Horsepower". This is all well and good. The "work" is linear and the time it takes to do the work is one second. When talking about engines which produce useful work in a rotational way, we speak of torque and horsepower. Horsepower being basically the speed at which the torque is produced. We don't need to get into the various uses of that power which requires maximum horsepower to be produced at low speed or high speed, that's the subject of another discussion and is not germain to this one. The "horsepower" unit was devised for the speed of linear work. It is very useful in describing the speed of rotational work. Torque is not a vector, it is work applied in a vector (rotational) direction. Some of your earlier argument suggested that torque can be measured if the the object that the torque is being applied to does not move. I suggested that while the *potential* torque can be measured there is no work/torque performed until the object moves. Yes, you can apply a lot of force and still not have the nut move. You can also apply a lot of force trying to move a rock and no work is accomplished until the rock does move, in a linear way. This is directly analogous to to the nut not moving in your example. The reason that torque and work/energy use the same units is that they really are the same thing. If the thing doesn't move, there is only force, no work or torque. If the thing moves over a distance, linear or rotational, there is work/ torque. If you measure the rate at which this work or torque is taking place, the unit you use to describe either linear or rotational power is *horsepower*. The argument I'm making here is that the only difference between force/work and torque is the direction the force is applied. Linear for force/work, rotational/vector for torque. |
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