When you pull a sled through the snow, why does only part of your force do work?

Answer 1

Only part of the force you apply to your sled will be transferred to kinetic energy.

This is not an entirely efficient operation: your muscles provide the sled with energy, which is converted to thermal and sound energy by the friction between the runners and the snow. The sled then converts the remaining energy to kinetic energy, which propels it in the direction you are pulling.

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Answer 2

Elena Albarran

When you pull a sled through the snow, only the horizontal component of your force does work because work is defined as the component of force in the direction of motion multiplied by the displacement. Since the sled moves horizontally, only the horizontal component of your force contributes to the work done on the sled.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.