Working Hard or Hardly Working

Winter Storm Skylar

Living in one of the most North parts of Rhode Island can lead to a lot of snow that needs to be removed from the driveway. Over the past couple of days, this was especially true with winter storm Skylar dropping 18 inches of snow into our yard. Luckily, we own a snow blower which makes the clearing process much easier. However, due to the snowblower's limited height capacity, it is of utmost importance that the snow doesn't pile up too much rendering the snowblower useless. This is why my dad and I snow-blow our driveway multiple times throughout the storm.

To more closely examine how much work is done in clearing the driveway, I measured the dimensions and height of the snow before we went out and cleared the snow for a second time.

Length of Driveway: 52 ft 4 inches or 15.95 Meters

Width of Driveway: 21 ft or 6.4 Meters

Height of Snow: 5.5 inches or .14 Meters

During the storm my car was parked in the driveway so this must be subtracted from the work of the snowblower.

Length of Car: 15 ft or 4.57 Meters

Width of Car: 6 ft or 1.87 Meters

By doing some research, I found that snow weighed about .16 grams per cubic centimeter

Total weight of snow: 2,282.11 kg

Weight of Snow on car: 191.46 kg

This means that there was a total of  2090.65 kg of snow moved by the snowblower.
Total Time: 10.5 Minutes

Calculating the Work Done By Snowblower

To calculate the work of the snowblower, I will use the formula:

W =ΔKe

I already know the mass of the snow so now I just need to find the velocity that the snowblower shot the snow at. The snowblower shot the snow an average of  12 ft or 3.65 meters in about 1.5 seconds at an average angle of 45 degrees. 

Vx = D / t

Vx = 2.433 m/s

Cos θ = adjacent / hypotenuse

Velocity = 2.433 / cos(45) =

3.441 m/s

W = .5 * 2,282 * 3.441^2 - 0

W = 12,377.2 J

Therefore, the snowblower did 12,377.2 Joules of work to clear the snow. 

Overall, this is a lot of work that I am thankful I did not have to do by hand. While it may be annoying to have to go out multiple times during the storm, it is much easier than using a shovel to clear the driveway. While, there were parts that the snowblower couldn't reach, it was easy to grab a shovel and move the rest aside. This may seem like a lot of work but, thanks to our snowblower, I was hardly working. 

Works Cited 

“Volume to Weight Conversion.” Volume to Weight Conversions for Common Substances and Materials, www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/volume-to-weight.