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I was recently retained as an engineering expert in a lawsuit in which I had to determine the force acting upon an object. In order to quantify that force, I employed Gaspard Gustave de Coriolis‘ Principle of Work, an engineering concept he introduced in his 1829 textbook, Calculation of the Effects of Machines. We’ll take our first look at de Coriolis’ Principle of Work today, along with the term he used to quantify work, the dynamode. As a scientist living during the time of the great Industrial Revolution, de Coriolis was interested in lots of things, and he was particularly interested in quantifying the effort involved to accomplish tasks, like how many men, horses, or steam engines were required to move a stationary object. He defined this activity as work, and he hoped its study would lead to a broadly accepted engineering principle which could be applied across industrial functions. According to de Coriolis, work is the force acting upon a stationary object which causes it to move, multiplied by the distance moved. Work could also be defined as the force acting upon an object already in motion, multiplied by the distance traveled before it comes to a stop. To quantify work, de Coriolis proposed the dynamode as its unit of measure, a term which derives from the Greek words dynamis, meaning power, and odos, meaning path. He went on to define one dynamode as the amount of work required to lift an object with a mass of 1,000 Kg, or kilograms, one meter above the ground.
de Coriolis’ Dynamode Quantity
Catchy as it may sound, the word dynamode is all but forgotten today. But de Coriolis’ Principle of Work and his formula to calculate work remain to the present day as fundamental concept in engineering. We’ll present that formula next time. Copyright 2015 – Philip J. O’Keefe, PE Engineering Expert Witness Blog ____________________________________ |
Tags: de Coriolis’ Principle of Work, dynamode, engineering expert, joule, lawsuit, work
