Frictional force is non Conservative force.How?

1 Answer
May 13, 2018

Yes, frictional forces are non conservative.

Explanation:

A conservative force is one which allows for the work done to be independent of the path of the object being acted upon. In the case of friction this is not true.

For example, if one path from A to B is a straight line and a second path is not a straight line, then the energy removed from the object due to friction will be different along both paths. This is because the longer the object endures the frictional force, the more energy it will lose. This means that how the object travels from A to B will change how much energy is lost by the object. That is the definition of a non conservative force.

In the specific case of a frictional force applied on an object over the path A to B: the longer the path the more energy that is lost by the object.