In reply to Eric Walker's message of Tue, 17 Nov 2015 09:54:59 -0600: Hi, [snip] >If you take away the magnet, work would be done on the ferromagnetic weight as >it is accelerated to the ground. It is the magnet that provides an equal >amount of "work" to keep this from happening.
It doesn't actually perform any *work* to keep it from happening, it provides an opposing *force*. Neither the magnet nor gravity do any work, since there is no component of the motion vector that is *parallel* to the force vector. As you pointed out, what motion there is, is *perpendicular* to the force vectors. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
