Work, energy, and power problems

What you’ll practice

This quiz targets the core tools behind work–energy methods: translating a physical situation into equations and keeping track of signs, units, and energy transfers.

Expect questions on work by constant and variable forces, kinetic/potential energy changes, conservative vs non-conservative work, and average vs instantaneous power.

Format and difficulty settings

Each question has 4 options and there’s no timer, so you can compute carefully and double-check your reasoning.

Pick your preferred question count before you start, and set the difficulty to match your goal - use easier sets for fundamentals, harder sets for exam-level multi-step problems, or mixed to simulate a real test.

Common pitfalls to avoid

• Mixing up work done by a force with work done on a system (sign conventions)
• Forgetting that only the component of force along displacement does work (dot product)
• Confusing potential energy change with work by gravity (they differ by a minus sign)
• Using power formulas without consistent units (W = J/s) or time intervals
• Dropping non-conservative work terms (friction, applied pushes) in energy balance

How the quiz stays balanced

You’ll see a blend of conceptual prompts and calculation-heavy items, so you practice both intuition and execution.

Difficulty is balanced by mixing single-step definitions (like identifying positive/negative work) with longer setups that require choosing a method, writing an energy equation, and solving cleanly.