I have paper that I need to write for, but
like most college students, it is the last thing that I want to do. Being the procrastinator that I am, I want to
exert the least amount of force possible to complete the assignment. I want to determine how much energy must my
fingers exert to compete the essay.
Through research I found that the average number of letters in a word is
five, so 6 characters per word if I include the space after the word. My assignment must be 1750 words long which
means that it must be approximately 10500 characters longs. However, I cannot forget about punctuation
marks, so I will include an addition 100 characters to cover any periods or
commas that I may use for a grand total of 10600 characters. Now I must determine how much force is
required to type one letter. By quickly
looking on the Internet I can easily determine the mass of a penny. Therefore, I will stack pennies atop one key
until the letter appears on my computer screen.
I used a total of 22 pennies that each weighs an average of 2.5 grams
that resulted in a total force of 0.54 N.
To determine the a amount of energy required I need to know the distance
that the key must depress in order to produce a character on the computer
screen. I estimate this to be about 2.0
mm. Therefore, if Worktotal =
Force x distance then the total amount of energy I need to exert to
complete the essay is:
Wtotal= 0.54 x .0020 m x 10600
characters = 11.4 Joules
I also want to determine the rate at which I
am exerting this energy, or my power.
Since Power = Work/Δtime and it takes me
an average of 3.5 hours to write an essay then my total amount of power is:
P= 11.4 J/3.5 hours x 1 hour/3600
sec = 0.00091 J/s
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