Work and energy

This course is a part of AP®︎ Physics 1, a 12-course Topic series from Khan Academy.

"Energy" is a word that's used a lot. Here, you'll learn about how it's one of the most useful concepts in physics. Along the way, we'll talk about work, kinetic energy, potential energy, conservation of energy, and mechanical advantage.

This course contains 7 segments:

Introduction to work

You're doing a lot more work than you realize (most of which goes unpaid). This lesson will introduce the definition of work we use in physics, which will give us another way to think about forces and movement.

Kinetic energy

Kinetic energy is the energy an object has because of its motion. We'll talk about how to calculate kinetic energy, and how kinetic energy is related to work.

Work-energy theorem

Gravitational potential energy and conservative forces

Learn about what gravitational energy means and how it is related to conservative forces such as gravity.

Spring potential energy and Hooke's law

Weighing machines of all sorts employ springs that take a certain amount of force to keep compressed or stretched to a certain point. Hooke's law will give us all the tools to weigh in on the subject ourselves and spring into action (pun intended)!

Conservation of energy

Learn about the law of conservation of energy, and how it can be useful for solving physics problems.

Power

Learn what power means and how we use it in physics to describe the rate of energy transfer.