Question

An office worker has his lunch on the 53rd floor of an office building. In which case is the gravitational potential energy of the lunch-Earth system greatest?

Answer 1

Options

a. The worker carried the lunch up to the 53rd floor in the elevator.

b. The worker got a ride in a helicopter to the top of the 68-floor building and then carried the lunch down in the elevator to the 53rd floor?

c. The Worker carried it up the stairs to the 53rd floor.

d. Gravitational potential energy does not depend on the path taken.

Answer:

The gravitational Energy would remain the same in all cases.

Explanation:

Gravitational Energy is a conservative energy and its potential energy comes from gravitational actions.

An instance is when someone lifts a weight from the floor to a certain height and then dropped the weight back to the floor; the work done by the field will not be altered at all; it'll be the same throughout.

If otherwise, it'll be against thermodynamics 2nd law of physics because the object would have remaining energy after returning to the starting point,

For this reason, the gravitational potential energy only depends from the height, and is independent from the path taken to reach there.