Difference Between Work and Power

Work vs Power

Work and power are two concepts in physics that have very real and practical implications to our daily lives. The main relationship or difference between the two is time. Work is the amount of energy necessary to move an object from one point to another. Imagine moving a table or seat from your living room to your dining room. On the other hand, power is the rate at which the energy is spent. In the example above, if you push the object slowly, you are exerting a small amount of power, but it will take a bit longer. If you push the object quickly, you’d need a lot more power but accomplish the same task quicker. All the while, the work done on the object is the same even if the person who pushed it exerted more effort.

One area where we see power is in automobiles. Engines are rated in terms of the horsepower they can produce. This is directly related to the vehicle’s top speed and acceleration. A vehicle with a smaller engine isn’t able to match the speed or acceleration of one with a bigger engine, but it is still able to get you to where you want to go.

Another area where power and work is easily relatable is at home with electricity and electrical appliances. If you look behind your appliances, you will see its power rating in watts, a unit of electrical power. So a TV that is rated at 100 watts would consume 100 watts maximum for every second that it is turned on. When you get your electric bill, though the consumption has the unit of a kilowatt-hour; a consumption of 1,000 watts for an hour. So the TV above would have to be functioning for ten hours in order to consume one kilowatt-hour. A bigger TV with a 200 watt power rating would only take half that time to consume a kilowatt-hour.

In actual day-to-day use, people are more likely to encounter power than work. Almost all devices use power ratings to indicate how much power they need in order to function. Values for work are of lesser importance and are more difficult to relate to in the real world as the actual amount is very variable depending on the length of usage, distance travelled, and the like.

Summary:

1.Power is the rate at which work is being done.
2.Power is used more often than work.

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