Re: Petential Energy doing Work

On 7/15/2024 2:42 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

 By slowly lowering your center of mass, you are lowering your
potential energy.  Potential energy is where nothing is moving.  You
have the potential of moving but there's little or no kinetic (moving)
energy produced.  In other words, you cannot dissipate potential
energy without first converting it to kinetic energy.

Actually, by using your body strength to lower a mass, you do dissipate the potential energy without (necessarily) converting it to kinetic energy. You do it by applying opposing work.
Mechanical work is defined as essentially force times distance. (I'm omitting details Tom wouldn't understand.) The work done in lowering a mass to a position of rest is equal and opposite to the mass's initial potential energy. At the end of the process, the energy would be zero.
Again, there are some complications (variable forces, accelerations and decelerations, various possibilities for the PE datum, etc.) which people other than Tom might want to discuss. But the simple case should make the physics clear.
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- Frank Krygowski