The case against negative work

When an Olympic weight lifter raises 150 kg above their head, it is clear to most students that the weight lifter is doing work. What about the local gravitational field? It is conventional to consider the field in this case to be doing “negative work.” This convention may be useful to the skilled practitioner, but is it helpful to the beginning student? In this talk, I will argue that negative work is an arbitrary convention that confuses students when they encounter it in mechanics, and again in electricity or thermodynamics. There exist alternative approaches to teaching about work and energy that make this confusing convention unnecessary. This talk will argue that we should adopt them and leave negative work behind.