User:LGreg/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge (LG seminar 2020/21)/Seminar 18/Power/Power in Physics

Origins of Power in Physics
James Watt invented the scientific concept of power in around 1770. In the International System of Units (SI), the watt (W), which is the unit of power, is formally recognised as one joule per second, and was named after James Watt himself. Since this quantified power as the rate at which energy is expended, it resolves nicely with other approaches towards power such as the power one might have in hitting a ball.

Watt too adopted the term horsepower in the late 18th century to compare the power of a horse with the output of steam engines.

Interpretation of Power in Physics
In physics power is the time derivative of work; where work is the energy transferred to or from an object via the application of force along a displacement.

Thus, power is also defined as the product of the force and the velocity vectors. In rotational systems, power is the product of torque times velocity. In fluid mechanics, power is equal to the product of pressure times the volumetric flow rate.

Power Structures in the Study of Physics
Physics is a traditionally male dominated science. By this, we would traditionally mean that the most famous figures would be names such as Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, James Clerk Maxwell, James Ernest Rutherford, Marie Curie, Michael Faraday, Richard Feynman, Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg, Stephen Hawking and more. The Nobel Prize for Physics has been handed out 215 times by 2020, of which only 4 awards were to women. No black person has ever won the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Gender gaps in physics are amongst the highest in science, with Women in STEM fields being a minority. .

Explanations for low representations of women and people of colour in physics can be attributed to several societal power structures; systematic discrimination, intrinsic bias , harassment , lack of role models and psychological limitations due to these pre-established structures.