Tuesday, 20 March 2018

newtonian mechanics - Ice skater increase of energy


This may be a very basic question but I am not seeing how it works. Consider the standard example of an ice skate rotating about his/her center of mass and pulling in his/her arms. The torque is zero so we have conservation of angular momentum. This implies that $\omega$ increases to keep $I\omega$ constant, but then $K_{rot}=\frac{1}{2}I\omega^2$ doesn't stay constant, it increases. This implies that there is work done, but what force is doing this work?



Answer



The energy comes from the ice-skater's muscles; they have to work to pull their arms in.


There is no external work done on the skater - the energy is converted from the chemical potential energy stored in the skater's body to kinetic energy.


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