On Black Friday, my family and I took advantage of the myriad of ridiculously cheap objects on sale in Ala Moana, Waikele Shopping Center, and Navy Exchange. One of our lucky picks were two pieces of luggage bags.
As my brother proceeded to wheel the luggage upstairs, I was reminded of an old physics concept regarding forces and work. Because the force vector exerted on the luggage by my brother is at an angle to the displacement, only the component of force F (Fcostheta) in the direction of displacement X contributes to work. Fcostheta is the component of the force parallel to the displacement. The component Fsintheta, the force perpendicular to the displacement, is insignificant to work because there is no motion in the y direction. The angle theta is the angle between force F and displacement X vectors when placed tail to tail. Furthermore, because the force Fcostheta and displacement X point in the same direction, positive work is done.
Therefore the equation that mus be used to calculate how much work is done is the "dot product" of force Fcostheta and displacement X.
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