You drag your luggage down a hall. You pull at an angle of 82 degrees with a force of 2050N. The hall is 15m long and the luggage weighs 245N. How much work do you do?

When you pull at an angle to the motion of the object, you have to resolve the force into two components - one that is parallel to the direction of motion of the object and one that is perpendicular. Then multiply the force component that is parallel to the direction of motion by the distance the object moves.

Technically, Force is a scalar whose magnitude is equal to the dot product of the Force and Distance vectors:


Work = \vec F \cdot \vec d