Question

A particular heat engine does 10,000 J of work on a gas on the compression stroke, and the gas does 60,000 joules of work on the power stroke. Which of the following PV diagrams indicates the net work done by the heat engine in one cycle?

Answer 1

For a cyclic heat engine process, the PV diagram will be a closed loop. The area inside the loop will represent the amount of work done during the cycle.

The work done is given as,

`W=\text{work done by the gas-work done on the gas}`

Substituting all known values,

`\begin{gathered} W=60000\text{ J-10000 J} \\ =50000\text{ J} \end{gathered}`

Therefore, option (c) is the correct choice.