Consider a system of a cliff diver and the earth. the gravitational potential energy of the system decreases by 28,000 j as the diver drops to the water from a height of 32.0 m. determine her weight in newtons.

The decrease in gravitational potential energy of the system is given by

where

m is the mass, g is the gravitational acceleration, and is the variation of height of the system.

also corresponds to the weight of the diver, therefore if we rearrange the equation and we use and , we can find her weight:

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