Kinetic Energy

Kinetic energy (SI unit: the joule) is energy that a body possesses as a result of its
motion. It is formally defined as the work needed to accelerate a body from rest to its
current velocity. Having gained this energy during its acceleration, the body maintains
this kinetic energy unless its speed changes. Negative work of the same magnitude would
be required to return the body to a state of rest from that velocity. The etymology of
'kinetic energy' is the Greek word for motion kinesis and the Greek word for active work
energeia. Therefore the term 'kinetic energy' means through motion do active work. The
terms kinetic energy and work and their present scientific meanings date back to the mid
19th century. Early understandings of these ideas can be attributed to Gaspard-Gustave
Coriolis who in 1829 published the paper titled Du Calcul de l'effet des machines
outlining the mathematics of kinetic energy.

Definition

This equation states that the kinetic energy (Ek) is equal to the integral of the dot product
of the velocity (v) of a body and the infinitesimal change of the body's momentum (p). It
is assumed that the body starts at rest (motionless).

Description and examples

The following holds only if we assume that we are dealing with Newtonian mechanics
and that we have a point object. Simply writing "in the non-relativistic case" doesn't get
the job done, and elaborating the necessary conditions is too burdensome here. Under
certain assumptions, this work (and thus the kinetic energy) is equal to:

where m is the object's mass and v is the object's speed.

Energy can exist in many forms, for example chemical energy, heat, electromagnetic
radiation, potential energy (gravitational, electric, elastic, etc.), nuclear energy, mass, and
kinetic energy. Various forms of energy can often be converted to other forms. Kinetic
energy can be best understood by examples that demonstrate how it is transformed from
other forms of energy and to the other forms. For example a cyclist will use chemical
energy that was provided by food to accelerate a bicycle to a chosen speed. This speed
can be maintained without further work, except to overcome air-resistance and friction.
The energy has been converted into the energy of motion, known as kinetic energy but the
process is not completely efficient and heat is also produced within the cyclist. The
kinetic energy in the moving bicycle and the cyclist 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. (There are some frictional losses so that the bicycle will never quite
regain all the original speed.) Alternatively the cyclist could connect a dynamo to one of
the wheels and also generate some electrical energy on the descent. The bicycle would be
travelling more slowly at the bottom of the hill because some of the energy has been
diverted into making electrical power. Another possibility would be for the cyclist to
apply the brakes, in which case the kinetic energy would be dissipated as heat energy.

Spacecraft use chemical energy to take off and gain considerable kinetic energy to reach
orbital velocity. This kinetic energy gained during launch will remain constant while in
orbit because there is almost no friction. However it becomes apparent at re-entry when
the kinetic energy is converted to heat. Kinetic energy can be passed from one object to
another. In the game of billiards, the player gives kinetic energy to the cue ball by striking
it with the cue stick. If the cue ball collides with another ball, it will slow down
dramatically and the ball it collided with will accelerate to a speed as the kinetic energy is
passed on to it. Collisions in billiards are elastic collisions, where kinetic energy is
preserved.

Flywheels are being developed as a method of energy storage (see article flywheel energy
storage). This illustrates that kinetic energy can also be rotational. Note the formula in the
articles on flywheels for calculating rotational kinetic energy is different, though
analogous.

Energy conversion is any process of converting energy from one form to another. Energy
found in fossil fuels, solar radiation, or nuclear fuels needs to be converted into other
energy forms such as electrical, propulsive, or cooling to be useful. Machines are used to
convert energy from one form to another. The efficiency of a machine characterizes how
well it can convert the energy from one form to another. Energy is converted so that it
may be used by other machines or to provide an energy service to society. An internal
combustion engine converts the chemical energy in the gasoline to the propulsive energy
that moves a car. A solar cell converts the solar radiation into the electrical energy that
can then be used to light a bulb or power a computer.

Simple calculation

In classical mechanics, the kinetic energy of a "point object" (a body so small that its size

can be ignored) is given by the equation where m is the mass and v is the
speed of the body. For example - one would calculate the kinetic energy of an 80 kg mass

travelling at 40 mph (17.8816 metres per second) as joules.

Note that the kinetic energy increases with the square of the speed. This means for
example that if you are traveling twice as fast, you need to lose four times as much energy
to stop.
In Newtonian mechanics

For non-relativistic mechanics, the formula above gives:

It sometimes is convenient to split the total kinetic energy of body into the sum of the
body's center-of-mass translational kinetic energy and the energy of rotation around the
center of mass rotational energy:

where:

Ek is the total kinetic energy

Et is the translational kinetic energy
Er is the rotational energy or angular kinetic energy

For the translational kinetic energy of a body with constant mass m, whose centre of mass
is moving in a straight line with speed v, as seen above is equal to

where:

m is mass of the body

v is speed of the centre of mass body

If a body is rotating, its rotational kinetic energy or angular kinetic energy is simply sum
of kinetic energies of its moving parts, and thus is equal to:

where:

I is the body's moment of inertia

ω is the body's angular velocity.

The kinetic energy of a system depends on the inertial frame of reference. It is lowest
with respect to the center of mass, i.e., in a frame of reference in which the center of mass
is stationary. In another frame of reference the additional kinetic energy is that
corresponding to the total mass and the speed of the center of mass. Thus kinetic energy
is a relative measure and no object can be said to have a unique kinetic energy. A rocket
engine could be seen to transfer its energy to the rocket ship or to the exhaust stream
depending upon the chosen frame of reference. But the total energy of the system, ie
kinetic energy, fuel chemical energy, heat energy etc, will be conserved regardless of the
choice of measurement frame. The kinetic energy of an object is related to its momentum
by the equation:

In relativistic mechanics

Einstein's relativistic mechanics must be used for calculating the kinetic energy of bodies
whose speeds are a significant fraction of the velocity of light. As Einstein's formula
states:

E = mc2.

For an object in motion:

where m0 is the rest mass, v is the object's speed, and c is the speed of light in vacuum.

So:

The equation shows that the energy of an object approaches infinity as the velocity v
approaches the speed of light c, thus it is impossible to accelerate an object across this
boundary. By substituting x = (v / c)2 we can rewrite this as:

The first two Taylor series coefficients of the correction factor are:

So we approximate :

,
indicating that the total energy can be partitioned into the rest mass's energy plus the
traditional newtonian energy (at low speeds). When objects move at speeds much slower
than light (e.g. in everyday phenomena on Earth), the first two terms of the series
predominate. The next term in the approximation is small for low speeds, and can be
found by extending the expansion into a Taylor series by one more term:

For example, for a speed of 10 km/s the correction to the Newtonian kinetic energy is
0.07 J/kg (on a Newtonian kinetic energy of 50 MJ/kg) and for a speed of 100 km/s it is
710 J/kg (on a Newtonian kinetic energy of 5 GJ/kg), etc. For higher speeds, the formula
for the relativistic kinetic energy is derived by simply subtracting out the rest mass
energy:

The relation between kinetic energy and momentum is more complicated in this case, and
is given by the equation:

This can also be expanded as a Taylor series, the first term of which is the simple
expression from Newtonian mechanics. What this suggests is that the formulae for energy
and momentum are not special and axiomatic, but rather concepts which emerge from the
equation of mass with energy and the principles of relativity.

In quantum mechanics

In quantum wave-mechanics, the expectation value of the electron kinetic energy, ,

for a system of electrons described by the wavefunction is a sum of 1-electron
operator expectation values:

where me is the mass of the electron and is the Laplacian operator acting upon the
coordinates of the i'th electron and the summation runs over all electrons.

The density functional formalism of quantum mechanics requires knowledge of the

electron density only, i.e., it formally does not require knowledge of the wavefunction.
Given an electron density ρ(r), the exact N-electron kinetic energy functional is unknown;
however, for the specific case of a 1-electron system, the kinetic energy can be written as
where T[ρ] is known as the Weizsacker kinetic energy functional.