Negative work

[Rita Chen 1B]

When is work negative?

[Daniel Toscano 1L]

When a system does work

[Jessica Li 4F]

Work is negative when a system does work, which means that it expands. If you do work, you lose energy, so it is negative. On the other hand, work is being done on the system when it is compressed. Think of it as the system can expand by itself, but you have to do something to the system to compress it.

[Matthew Tsai 2H]

When a system does work, it loses energy in the process, so the value for w is negative.

[Jacob Motawakel]

A system's work is negative when that system does work, Work is positive for a system if work is done on that system.

[Callum Guo 1H]

when your system does work. so in this class, most of the time its when a gas expands.

[Amanda Mei 1B]

When a system pushes against an external force (pressure), it loses energy and thus work is negative. Usually this causes volume to expand.

[HuyHa_2H]

Work is negative when a system is doing work because that's what it loses hence the negative. Conversely, it's positive if something else is doing work on the system.

[Kayli Choy 2F]

Work = -(pressure)(FinalVolume - InitialVolume). Therefore, if your final volume is greater than your initial volume (gas expands) then your change in volume will be positive, so this is why work will be negative. Additionally if your initial volume is greater than your final volume (gas is compressed), then your change in volume will be negative, so work will be positive.

[Matthew Chan 1B]

Work is negative when the system does work itself, which makes sense since the system is "losing" work/energy, which makes sense why it would be negative.

[Nikki Razal 1L]

when a system does work, it is by a negative sign

[CalvinTNguyen2D]

Work, as viewed through the lenses of chemistry, is positive when it is being done ON the system. Therefore, work is negative when the system itself is doing work on the surroundings.

[lauraxie2e]

when the system does work on the surroundings

[Elizabeth Harty 1A]

When a system does work the value is negative

[Ian Morris 3C]

if a system is negative, then it just has done work