What is work? I mean real work. It is a little complicated, but simple at the same time. I will explain in this bog.
We have been spending a lot of time discussing Energy, but I want to talk about work here and there is a very big difference. Let me start off with a couple of simple definitions. First off, work is defined as "Force x Distance" and Energy is the "Ability to do work". Sounds a little confusing, but I will explain with some examples.
As you might have guessed, this has a lot more to do with economics than physics. We always talk about work and working hard, but what does that mean? Remember that work is "force x distance". If a person's job is to load bricks onto a truck, when he picks up a brick from the ground and raises it to the bed of a truck, that is real work. He has to eat a big breakfast to have the "energy" to do that "work" and he gets tired when his body can no longer produce the "energy" to keep doing that work. I would define hard work as the type of work that uses or requires the most energy.
Now what does this have to do with economics? Interesting that you asked. Let's use the example of the person who has to plow or spade a field to get it ready to plant and grow food. There are several choices of how he might do this job. Note that the job requires the same amount of energy, but he has some control over it source. He could spade the field with his bare hands or using a stick. This would be a lot of work for the person and he would get very tired and have to eat a lot of food. He could use a tool like a shovel. I think you can see how important the invention of tools is for humans to improve their quality of life. They could also use a horse or an oxen and feed the animal just hay or grass. Remember that Native Americans did not have any domestic animals like horse or oxen so they had to do all their work by hand. Notice that in both of the cases above the energy came from food of some kind.
Us humans want to eat well and do as little work for for it as possible, so what is next. Some smart human invents an engine that runs on coal or oil so no food is required. Now the humans can eat the food and the horses and cows if they want rather than feeding them for work. Now the human can ride the tractor and do a lot less work. If he keeps eating food as before he will start to get fatter and fatter. That is another story.
Now look at the economics of all of this. For the human to do the work with the energy from eating food, he will have to eat a very large amount of food, but if the energy comes from coal or oil it will save him a ton of money. How much you ask? Think if the human tilled just on acre of land using a shovel or plowing with a horse. If he did it by hand it would take at least a week and if he used the horse it would take a whole day. If he did it with a tractor using oil for energy, he could do it in a hour. What would be the cost of each method? A very good question.
Counting the humans time and his food and the food for the horse, it would cost close to $500. With the tractor it might take two gallons of oil and the driver's time for a total cost of less than $50. Are you starting to see the impact of "Work" and "Energy" on our quality of life. We still have to do the same amount of "Work" to maintain our quality of life, but it is the "Energy" that make our current quality of life possible. I think that you can see that "screwing" with our energy can have a major impact on our quality of life and it "has".
As they say, "When you screw with energy you are screwing with dynamite".
