Power
9. Work & Energy / Power / Problem 2
Drag force from the air is the dominant resistive force acting on a motorcycle moving at constant speed on a flat surface (other forms of friction can be ignored). The work done by the engine is dissipated as work is done against drag force. We'll treat the motorcycle with the rider as having a cross-sectional area of 0.65 m2 and a drag coefficient of 0.75. We'll also take the density of air to be 1.2 kg/m3. The motorcycle's engine generates power by burning gasoline. Taking the energy value of gasoline as 45 MJ/kg and the engine/transmission to be 28% efficient at converting chemical energy in gasoline to mechanical energy, find the engine's rate of consuming gasoline (in watts) when driving at a constant speed of 40 km/h.
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