Question

The steel rails weighed ______ pounds and took ______ workers to carry lay the rails in place.

Answer 1

To determine the work done by a mule on a barge, the equation Work = Force × Distance × cos(Theta) is used, with the force at 1200 N, the distance at 10,000 m, and the angle as 20 degrees. The calculated result should be close to 11 MJ.

Step-by-step explanation:

The student is asking a physics-related question about the work done by a mule as it pulls a barge. To calculate the work done, we must consider the force exerted by the mule, the distance over which this force acts, and the angle at which the force is applied relative to the direction of movement. Work is defined as the product of the force component in the direction of the movement and the distance moved. In this case, since the force is not directed exactly along the path, only the component of the force along the direction of travel does work. To find the work done by the mule, we can use the equation Work = Force × Distance × cos(Theta), where Theta is the angle between the direction of the force and the direction of movement.

Given the force (1200 N), the distance (10 km or 10,000 meters), and the angle (20 degrees), we can calculate the work done as follows:

1. Convert the angle to radians if needed. However, most calculators have a 'degree' mode, and we will proceed with degrees in this case.
2. Calculate the cosine of the angle: cos(20 degrees).
3. Multiply the resulting cosine, the force, and the distance: Work = 1200 N × 10,000 m × cos(20 degrees).
4. Perform the calculation to find the work done by the mule on the barge. We would arrive at the solution, which should be one of the provided options.

The answer to the question would be approximately 113 M multiplied by the cosine of 20 degrees, yielding a result close to 11 MJ (The exact calculation would give a precise result).