Kinetic energy

In physics, the kinetic energy of an object is the form of energy that it possesses due to its motion.
In classical mechanics, the kinetic energy of a non-rotating object of mass m traveling at a speed v is.
The kinetic energy of an object is equal to the work, or force in the direction of motion times its displacement, needed to accelerate the object from rest to its given speed. The same amount of work is done by the object when decelerating from its current speed to a state of rest.
The SI unit of energy is the joule, while the English unit of energy is the foot-pound.
In relativistic mechanics, is a good approximation of kinetic energy only when v is much less than the speed of light.

History and etymology

The adjective kinetic has its roots in the Greek word κίνησις kinesis, meaning "motion". The dichotomy between kinetic energy and potential energy can be traced back to Aristotle's concepts of actuality and potentiality.
The principle of classical mechanics that E ∝ mv² is conserved was developed by Gottfried Leibniz and Johann Bernoulli, who described kinetic energy as the living force or vis viva. Willem 's Gravesande of the Netherlands provided experimental evidence of this relationship in 1722. By dropping weights from different heights into a block of clay, Gravesande determined that their penetration depth was proportional to the square of their impact speed. Émilie du Châtelet recognized the implications of the experiment and published an explanation.
The terms kinetic energy and work in their present scientific meanings date back to the mid-19th century. Early understandings of these ideas can be attributed to Thomas Young, who in his 1802 lecture to the Royal Society, was the first to use the term energy to refer to kinetic energy in its modern sense, instead of vis viva. Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis published in 1829 the paper titled Du Calcul de l'Effet des Machines outlining the mathematics of kinetic energy. William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, is given the credit for coining the term "kinetic energy" c. 1849–1851. William Rankine, who had introduced the term "potential energy" in 1853, and the phrase "actual energy" to complement it, later cites William Thomson and Peter Tait as substituting the word "kinetic" for "actual".

Overview

occurs in many forms, including chemical energy, thermal energy, electromagnetic radiation, gravitational energy, electric energy, elastic energy, nuclear energy, and rest energy. These can be categorized in two main classes: potential energy and kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is the movement energy of an object. Kinetic energy can be transferred between objects and transformed into other kinds of energy.
Kinetic energy may be best understood by examples that demonstrate how it is transformed to and from other forms of energy. For example, a cyclist transfers chemical energy provided by food to the bicycle and cyclist's store of kinetic energy as they increase their speed. On a level surface, this speed can be maintained without further work, except to overcome air resistance and friction. The chemical energy has been converted into kinetic energy, the energy of motion, but the process is not completely efficient and produces thermal energy within the cyclist.
The kinetic energy in the moving cyclist and the bicycle can be converted to other forms. For example, the cyclist could encounter a hill just high enough to coast up, so that the bicycle comes to a complete halt at the top. The kinetic energy has now largely been converted to gravitational potential energy that can be released by freewheeling down the other side of the hill. Since the bicycle lost some of its energy to friction, it never regains all of its speed without additional pedaling. The energy is not destroyed; it has only been converted to another form by friction. Alternatively, the cyclist could connect a dynamo to one of the wheels and generate some electrical energy on the descent. The bicycle would be traveling slower at the bottom of the hill than without the generator because some of the energy has been diverted into electrical energy. Another possibility would be for the cyclist to apply the brakes, in which case the kinetic energy would be dissipated through friction as heat.
Like any physical quantity that is a function of velocity, the kinetic energy of an object depends on the relationship between the object and the observer's frame of reference. Thus, the kinetic energy of an object is not invariant.
Spacecraft use chemical energy to launch and gain considerable kinetic energy to reach orbital velocity. In an entirely circular orbit, this kinetic energy remains constant because there is almost no friction in near-earth space. However, it becomes apparent at re-entry when some of the kinetic energy is converted to heat. If the orbit is elliptical or hyperbolic, then throughout the orbit kinetic and potential energy are exchanged; kinetic energy is greatest and potential energy lowest at closest approach to the earth or other massive body, while potential energy is greatest and kinetic energy the lowest at maximum distance. Disregarding loss or gain however, the sum of the kinetic and potential energy remains constant.
Kinetic energy can be passed from one object to another. In the game of billiards, the player imposes kinetic energy on the cue ball by striking it with the cue stick. If the cue ball collides with another ball, it slows down dramatically, and the ball it hit accelerates as the kinetic energy is passed on to it. Collisions in billiards are effectively elastic collisions, in which kinetic energy is preserved. In inelastic collisions, kinetic energy is dissipated in various forms of energy, such as heat, sound and binding energy.
Flywheels have been developed as a method of energy storage. This illustrates that kinetic energy is also stored in rotational motion.
Several mathematical descriptions of kinetic energy exist that describe it in the appropriate physical situation. For objects and processes in common human experience, the formula mv² given by classical mechanics is suitable. However, if the speed of the object is comparable to the speed of light, relativistic effects become significant and the relativistic formula is used. If the object is on the atomic or sub-atomic scale, quantum mechanical effects are significant, and a quantum mechanical model must be employed.

Kinetic energy for non-relativistic velocity

Treatments of kinetic energy depend upon the relative velocity of objects compared to the fixed speed of light. Speeds experienced directly by humans are non-relativisitic; higher speeds require the theory of relativity.

Kinetic energy of rigid bodies

In classical mechanics, the kinetic energy of a point object, or a non-rotating rigid body depends on the mass of the body as well as its speed. The kinetic energy is equal to half the product of the mass and the square of the speed. In formula form:
where is the mass and is the speed of the body. In SI units, mass is measured in kilograms, speed in metres per second, and the resulting kinetic energy is in joules.
For example, one would calculate the kinetic energy of an 80 kg mass traveling at 18 metres per second as
When a person throws a ball, the person does work on it to give it speed as it leaves the hand. The moving ball can then hit something and push it, doing work on what it hits. The kinetic energy of a moving object is equal to the work required to bring it from rest to that speed, or the work the object can do while being brought to rest: net force × displacement = kinetic energy, i.e.,
Since the kinetic energy increases with the square of the speed, an object doubling its speed has four times as much kinetic energy. For example, a car traveling twice as fast as another requires four times as much distance to stop, assuming a constant braking force. As a consequence of this quadrupling, it takes four times the work to double the speed.
The kinetic energy of an object is related to its momentum by the equation:
where:

is momentum
is mass of the body

For the translational kinetic energy, that is the kinetic energy associated with rectilinear motion, of a rigid body with constant mass, whose center of mass is moving in a straight line with speed, as seen above is equal to
where:

is the mass of the body
is the speed of the center of mass of the body.

The kinetic energy of any entity depends on the reference frame in which it is measured. However, the total energy of an isolated system, i.e. one in which energy can neither enter nor leave, does not change over time in the reference frame in which it is measured. Thus, the chemical energy converted to kinetic energy by a rocket engine is divided differently between the rocket ship and its exhaust stream depending upon the chosen reference frame. This is called the Oberth effect. But the total energy of the system, including kinetic energy, fuel chemical energy, heat, etc., is conserved over time, regardless of the choice of reference frame. Different observers moving with different reference frames would however disagree on the value of this conserved energy.
The kinetic energy of such systems depends on the choice of reference frame: the reference frame that gives the minimum value of that energy is the center of momentum frame, i.e. the reference frame in which the total momentum of the system is zero. This minimum kinetic energy contributes to the invariant mass of the system as a whole.

Derivation

Without vector calculus

The work W done by a force F on an object over a distance s parallel to F equals
Using Newton's second law
with m the mass and a the acceleration of the object and
the distance traveled by the accelerated object in time t, we find with for the velocity v of the object