Question Video: Finding the Energy Supplied to an Appliance | Nagwa Question Video: Finding the Energy Supplied to an Appliance | Nagwa

Question Video: Finding the Energy Supplied to an Appliance Physics

A 60 W incandescent light bulb is left on for 30 seconds. How much energy is supplied to it over this time?

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Video Transcript

A 60-watt incandescent light bulb is left on for 30 seconds. How much energy is supplied to it over this time?

We have this light bulb then that uses up 60 watts of power. If we recall that power is equal to energy divided by time and that the units of power are watts, the units of energy are joules, the units of time are seconds, then we can see that the fact that this is a 60-watt bulb means that it uses up 60 joules of energy every second.

We can see that this way. Let’s say we rearrange this power equation so that energy is isolated on one side by itself. When we do that, we see that energy is equal to power times time. Substituting in for those values, we see it’s equal to 60 watts multiplied by the time the bulb is on, 30 seconds.

But look at this: power is equal to energy divided by time, which means that one watt is equal to a joule per second. This means we can go to our expression for power 60 watts and rewrite it as 60 joules per second. That’s because a joule per second is a watt. Once we’ve done that though, we see that the units of seconds in the denominator cancel with those in the numerator. We’re left in this expression with the units of joules, the units of energy.

So the energy 𝐸 then is equal to 60 joules multiplied by 30. 60 times 30 is 1800. So 1800 joules is the amount of energy supplied to the bulb over this time. And we found that result by multiplying the power used by the bulb times the time it was on.

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