How can a car reverse directions without using any energy?

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Something I don’t quite understand from a physics standpoint. Imagine a car going down a road approaching a roundabout, on neutral; it can follow the roundabout 180 degrees and start going in the reverse direction while only losing a little speed/energy. But the car did a lot of “work” in the physics sense — a multi-thousand-pound vehicle completely reversed direction in a few seconds. How is that energy redistributed (force diagram, etc) to show where the energy for all that work came from?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

You’re not doing work, because the force is not in the direction of motion, it’s perpendicular to the direction of motion. Sort of like how you don’t have to spend energy fighting gravity just to coast on level ground. When you turn, the steering forces are pointing sideways, not backwards.

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