Question

Find the hiker’s gravitational potential energy if the cliff is 60m high (Show the equation, show your work and answer with units.)

Answer 1

Explanation: The last question before this states the hiker's mass, which is 50kg.

The Gravity on earth is 9.8 m/s

Height is 60m high

Put that into this: PE = mgh

M = mass

G = Acceleration due to Gravity

H = Height in Meters

Now Solve.

Answer 2

Here we do not have the mass of the hiker, but we can answer it for a more general case, suppose that the mass of the hiker is M

For lifted objects, the only force acting on them is the force of gravity, and this force is equal to the mass times the gravitational acceleration, or:

Fg = M*g where g is equal to 9.8m/s^2

Now, the potential energy also depends on the distance that the object will move is it starts to fall, this distance h is the distance of the cliff for example, so we have:

PE = M*g*h

where the value of g is already known and the value of h is 60m