How To Understand Kinetic Energy

The word “kinetic” is derived from the Greek work kinesis, which means motion in English.  Gottfried Leibniz and Johann Bernoulli were the first people to begin a theory about kinetic energy, referring to it as an object’s “living force”.  It is the energy of the object in motion.  When an underwater vehicle moves from one point to another, kinetic energy is produced.  While work is the amount of force to make an object move, rest is the absence of work.  Knowing these terms, kinetic energy can also be defined as the amount of work that will allow an amount of mass to move from its resting state. 


There are also theories regarding how energy can be determined according to the viewpoint of the observer.  If a bus is moving past a pedestrian, that pedestrian will observe that there is kinetic energy produced by the motion of the bus as that person watches his shirt move.  On the other hand, if a scooter travels in parallel with a similar scooter at similar speeds, then there will be no difference in velocity between the two, hence, there is no kinetic energy in relation to both vehicles. 


There are three forms of kinetic energy namely vibrational, rotational, and translational energy.  Vibrational energy is produced when an object is vibrated.  An example is the energy that is exerted into your body when the vehicle you are riding passes through a rocky dirt road.  Rotational energy is produced when a certain object moves around a centrifuge or axis.  An example is the energy generated by the second hand on your watch as it rotates.  Translational energy is the energy that is produced when an object transfers from one point to the other.  An example is when you are walking from one area of a room to the other. 


Kinetic energy has two parts -- mass, the amount of matter in an object, and velocity, the rate of change in position, which is determined by speed and direction.  By using both components, we can determine the formula to obtain the amount of the energy.  Kinetic energy is the product of the quantity of mass and the quantity of velocity squared.  This means that the kinetic energy of the object is directly proportional to the square of its velocity.  If the speed of the object is accelerated to twice its original speed, then the kinetic energy is increased four fold. 


Joules is the unit for measuring kinetic energy, which is named after James Prescott Joules.  He was an English physicist who studied the nature of heat, and he developed the first law of thermodynamics.  In addition, the rest of the equation, which are mass and speed, are measured in kilograms and meters per second respectively.  Now that measurement is the issue, there is one particular event in the Universe that can only be described as a monster in many proportions.  A nova, which is a nuclear explosion of a white dwarf star, has the capacity to produce kinetic energy that can wipe out solar systems. 


The truth about kinetic energy is that it never acts alone.  When an enzyme reacts with certain proteins in the body, it would produce chemical and kinetic energy at the same time.  The concepts regarding energy never act alone, and this is why it is very interesting to understand kinetic energy.