Calculating Work Done to Pull Coal Out of a Mine Shaft

by Tyler MacDougall

Submitted : Fall 2013

I calculated the work done to pull a 2lb/ft. cable and 800 lb. of coal 500 feet up. I set up an integral with bounds zero to five-hundred. I put the function for which the rate of work is changing 1800-2xdx, inside of the integral. Then, I anti-differentiated to get the function, the total work done. Then, I plugged in the values of my bounds, and I subtracted the lower bound from the upper bound. The total work done would be 650,000 ft-lb. This job would require machinery.

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