Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
There are two main descriptions of motion: dynamics and kinematics.Dynamics is general, since the momenta, forces and energy of the particles are taken into account. In this instance, sometimes the term dynamics refers to the differential equations that the system satisfies (e.g., Newton's second law or Euler–Lagrange equations), and sometimes to the solutions to those equations.
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 ...
In the simple case of a single particle moving with a constant velocity (thereby undergoing uniform linear motion), the action is the momentum of the particle times the distance it moves, added up along its path; equivalently, action is the difference between the particle's kinetic energy and its potential energy, times the duration for which ...
Newton's third law must be modified in special relativity. The third law refers to the forces between two bodies at the same moment in time, and a key feature of special relativity is that simultaneity is relative. Events that happen at the same time relative to one observer can happen at different times relative to another.
During the collision of small objects, kinetic energy is first converted to potential energy associated with a repulsive or attractive force between the particles (when the particles move against this force, i.e. the angle between the force and the relative velocity is obtuse), then this potential energy is converted back to kinetic energy ...
When the fifth ball begins accelerating, it is receiving momentum and energy from the third and fourth balls through the spring action of their compressed surfaces. For identical elastic balls of any type with initially touching balls, the action is the same for the first strike, except the time to complete a collision increases in softer ...
For two pairwise interacting point particles, the gravitational potential energy is the work that an outside agent must do in order to quasi-statically bring the masses together (which is therefore, exactly opposite the work done by the gravitational field on the masses): = = where is the displacement vector of the mass, is gravitational force acting on it and denotes scalar product.
Kinetic energy T is the energy of the system's motion and is a function only of the velocities v k, not the positions r k, nor time t, so T = T(v 1, v 2, ...). V , the potential energy of the system, reflects the energy of interaction between the particles, i.e. how much energy any one particle has due to all the others, together with any ...