Let increase down the ramp. On a plane, static friction acts uphill. Translation and rotation give
With , elimination yields . Static friction does no work at the stationary contact point.
For a sphere rolling in a symmetric groove, the distance from the centre to the instantaneous contact axis AB is , so . The kinetic energy and work-energy equation are
Hence
For the stated angles this is . Using and a one-second descent,
On the level floor the rolling radius becomes , so an energy-preserving change of rolling radius gives . Therefore
The floor speed exceeds the groove speed because less of the same total kinetic energy is rotational. Holding the translational speed fixed at the transition would violate the stipulated energy balance with the new no-slip constraint.
For , and , with . Thus
A photon obeys ; and agree because in vacuum.
Take the incident photon along , and write for the boost. In the boosted frame the initial momenta are
Their sum vanishes when , giving and . The initial photon energy there is , and total energy is .
For right-angle Compton scattering in the centre-of-momentum frame, choose the outgoing ZM photon along . The electron has the opposite momentum . Conservation of energy determines its magnitude:
Thus . Inverting the velocity transformation gives
Consequently
The electron recoils below the incident direction for our choice of photon scattering above it; the reflected configuration reverses both transverse signs. Finally,
As a check, , so the final energies sum to the initial . The outgoing laboratory photon makes with .
An electric dipole consists of opposite charges separated by a small displacement, with electric dipole moment directed from negative to positive. At distances large compared with its size,
The net charge term vanishes; the field decays faster than a monopole field. In an imposed slowly varying electric field,
for a permanent fixed dipole. A uniform field produces a torque but no net force. For a linear induced dipole , the interaction energy is instead , because building the dipole also costs energy.
A small planar current loop has magnetic dipole moment , with the normal fixed by the right-hand rule. Outside the source,
Magnetic field lines form closed loops; a current-loop dipole does not require magnetic monopoles. Dipole moments describe the leading directional field of a neutral localized source, and their torques explain alignment in external fields.
For two isolated point masses, introduce total mass , reduced mass and relative separation . The relative acceleration is . Conserved specific angular momentum fixes a plane and a constant areal velocity . The specific orbital energy is
For , the trajectory is a conic:
Negative energy gives an ellipse, including the circular limit ; zero energy gives a parabola; positive energy gives a hyperbola. Bound ellipses obey and
Thus Kepler's laws of planetary motion follow from angular momentum conservation and the inverse-square force. For a circular orbit of radius , , while escape from that radius requires . Energy determines whether the orbit is bound; angular momentum also determines its shape. These ideal results neglect extended-body perturbations, drag and relativistic corrections.
In vacuum, Maxwell's equations in SI units are
The displacement current term makes the last equation consistent with the charge continuity equation. In a source-free region, take the curl of Faraday's law and use . This gives
A plane electromagnetic wave therefore propagates at . The divergence equations make both fields transverse; the curl equations give
The electric fields and magnetic fields are in phase and perpendicular to one another and to the propagation direction. Their energy densities are equal:
For electric-field peak amplitude , the time-averaged intensity is . Mutually coupled changing electric fields and magnetic fields transport energy through vacuum, even where no charges or conduction currents are present.
In the centre-of-momentum frame the two equal masses have opposite velocities. Conservation of kinetic energy in an elastic collision fixes their common speed, so scattering changes their directions only. For incoming laboratory velocities and , the frame velocity is and the incoming relative velocities are . If the outgoing relative velocities are , then and the laboratory velocities are . Their dot product is zero: nonzero outgoing laboratory velocities are perpendicular.
For this smooth equal-disc oblique collision, let point from A to B at contact. The impulse acts only along ; the tangential velocity of A is unchanged. With , equal masses exchange their normal velocity components:
Therefore
No rotation about a disc centre is generated by these central impulses. At exactly head-on impact A stops, so its outgoing direction is undefined; the angle formula then denotes a limiting direction.
Figure 1.
Original velocity-vector construction for an equal-mass elastic collision, before and after impact in the laboratory and centre-of-momentum frames
. Details.
For this adhesive collision of two equal discs, use the parallel axis theorem about the midpoint of the touching centres:
Its magnitude is . Linear and angular momentum conservation give
The rotation has the sign of , clockwise for the printed geometry. The energy loss is . After impact the midpoint translates uniformly and the rigid pair rotates uniformly about it: there are no external horizontal forces or axial torques.
Rough unglued edges can transmit a tangential impulse and generate angular momentum about the individual disc centres. The centre-of-mass velocity and total angular momentum still have the values above, but individual translational speeds, angular velocities and energy loss require a friction/contact law and normal restitution. Roughness alone does not imply permanent sticking or the adhesive result.
Measure from the static equilibrium position, so the constant gravitational force has already cancelled the equilibrium spring force. With stationary oil, Newton's second law gives . The characteristic exponents are , where
For the stipulated phase of the damped cosine,
At , the velocity is not zero: . Thus
Expanding at small gives the requested light-damping loss . The exact instantaneous energy also satisfies .
From the static extension, ; the instantaneous drag measurement gives . Consequently and . Two successive downward equilibrium crossings are one damped period apart, so the same energy ratio applies. At the first crossing . Therefore
The speed has decreased by . These values use the exact decay factor, not the first-order approximation.
Substitution into the wave equation gives and . Therefore . The fixed edges at zero are automatically satisfied by the sine factors; the opposite edges require
Neither integer may vanish, because that would make the entire displacement zero.
The element's mass is , and its speed is . Squaring and multiplying by half its mass gives the requested energy density. The two sine-squared spatial integrals are and , so
There is no dissipation. The total mechanical energy equals the maximum kinetic energy, giving
Equivalently, integrate the small-slope tension energy and use the dispersion relation.
For , the two lowest modes are and :
The fundamental has one antinode at and no interior nodal line. The next mode has a node along and opposite-sign antinodes at and . Every boundary is a node.
Figure 1.
Original displacement maps for the two lowest modes of a rectangular membrane, showing nodal lines and signed antinodes
. Details.
The square fundamental has . Equating it to gives
At the same peak displacement amplitude and frequency, time-averaged kinetic energy is proportional to membrane area. Therefore
The reciprocal ratio is if the rectangle is placed first.
In vacuum the electric and magnetic field energy densities are
For example, charging a capacitor requires . A parallel-plate capacitor with and then gives , identifying the electric field energy density. Similarly an inductor stores ; applying this to a long solenoid yields times its interior volume.
Electromagnetic energy is transported by the Poynting vector . Poynting's theorem,
expresses local energy conservation and transfer to matter. In a vacuum plane wave , so the two energy densities are equal and the energy flux has magnitude . For nondispersive linear media the corresponding reversible expressions are and ; they must not be applied unchanged to arbitrary dispersive or hysteretic materials.
In standard configuration the frames are inertial, their corresponding axes are parallel, S moves at along the positive axis of S, and their origins coincide at . Here and label the same event, is the speed of light and .
A clock fixed in S has . The inverse time transformation gives
so the moving clock accumulates less proper time between its two ticks than the elapsed S-coordinate time.
Without time dilation the flight time from the given altitude would be , about rest-frame mean lifetimes, giving survival fraction only even at speed . Relativistic muons can instead reach the ground with appreciable survival. Momentum-selected decay measurements test this clock-rate dependence experimentally.[ref]
A mean-lifetime survival energy estimate requires a mean flight time no greater than the dilated mean lifetime:
This corresponds to survival probability at least about . There is no sharp minimum energy for an individual random decay. For a required probability , use . Energy loss in the atmosphere is neglected in this estimate. In the muon's frame the atmospheric path is length-contracted to ; the ground reaches it in about , giving the same survival probability.
For the two-body decay, use the rest frame of A. Momentum conservation makes B and the photon oppositely directed with equal momentum magnitude . Energy conservation and the energy–momentum relation give
Substitution and cancellation of give
A nonzero emitted photon requires .
For the spring oscillator,
so the total mechanical energy is conserved.
For U-tube liquid oscillation, define positive as the fall of the left surface, equal to the rise of the right surface. The hydrostatic height difference is . Moving a volume against this height difference gives , hence
Energy conservation yields . Equivalently the net pressure force is , so the equation holds also at turning points:
With negligible added volume, , . Thus
The graph starts at zero with positive slope and first reaches its maximum after .
Figure 1.
Original U-tube displacement solutions: the requested frictionless oscillation and the viscously damped response with exponential envelopes
. Details.
For viscously damped U-tube oscillation, the total damping force is , not . Consequently
The underdamped initial-value solution is , where . Setting its amplitude envelope equal to gives
This is the decay of the envelope, not the first time the instantaneous displacement passes through .
A travelling wave, for example , has moving constant-phase surfaces. A standing wave, for example , has stationary nodes and can be formed from two equal counterpropagating waves.
For the half-line finite well with , define and . The hard wall requires for and , so the general allowed forms are
At the finite step both and are continuous:
There is no requirement to match the derivative to zero across the infinite wall.
For a bound state , put . Normalizability excludes the growing exponential, leaving inside and outside. Matching their logarithmic derivatives gives
The exterior expression is equivalent to by rescaling its constant. Negative cotangent first occurs for ; all higher allowed intervals also have . Thus . Since , a normalizable bound state requires
This is also sufficient: on the lowest negative-cotangent branch, the two matching sides cross whenever . The printed non-strict inequality includes the threshold limit. At equality and the exterior is not square-integrable, so it is not itself a bound state.
For the helium mass and energy scale given, the limiting width is
Actual binding requires a width just larger than this threshold in the stated ideal potential.
Faraday's law relates induced electromotive force to the rate of change of magnetic flux linkage. For a coil with turns and a consistent right-hand orientation,
Flux can change through field variation or circuit motion. Lenz's law is the minus sign: the induced current's field opposes the flux change, consistent with energy conservation. It opposes the change rather than necessarily opposing the original field.
For a linear fixed-geometry inductor, and the self-induced electromotive force is . The passive terminal voltage drop is instead . The stored magnetic energy is
Inductance is measured in henries. Transformers use mutual inductance: changing one winding's current induces an electromotive force in another.
For a test mass moving around a fixed central mass , gravity is central and conservative. Specific angular momentum and specific orbital energy are constant. The motion is planar and sweeps equal areas in equal times, .
For a nonradial orbit, the inverse-square force gives a conic section,
Negative energy gives an ellipse, zero energy a parabola and positive energy a hyperbola. For an ellipse of semimajor axis ,
A circular orbit is the case, with . Escape from radius requires in the absence of further forces. For two comparable masses, apply the relative two-body equation with replaced by , rather than treating one body as fixed.
In the laboratory frame the incoming particle and the composite move along , while the target is initially at rest. In the equal-energy two-photon decay of a moving particle, zero total transverse momentum makes the two photon directions symmetric about . Each photon has energy and momentum magnitude , so longitudinal momentum conservation gives . Therefore
Their momenta can be written . The opening angle is not in this frame, because the parent carried nonzero total momentum.
For a particle of rest mass , and , with . The low-speed expansion is , separating invariant rest energy from the nonrelativistic kinetic energy term.
Conserve the total laboratory energy and momentum at coalescence: and . Since , the combined particle moves at . Its rest mass is . The incident particle is not of mass : its stated energy and momentum imply . Thus
The extra is internal rest energy retained by the composite after a perfectly inelastic collision; total energy and four-momentum are conserved, while the sum of individual rest masses need not be.
The composite's Lorentz factor is . For a rest-frame lifetime , the corresponding laboratory time is and its travel distance is
If denotes a mean radioactive lifetime, this is the mean flight distance, not a fixed distance for every decay. The separate frame diagrams below use the common positive collision axis.
Figure 1.
Original momentum-direction diagrams for the laboratory and centre-of-momentum frames, with equal-energy photons and the composite at rest in its own frame
. Details.
Use phasors. The relation gives . The three branches form a parallel RLC circuit and share the source voltage. The source-current phasor and its real time dependence are
Consequently its amplitude is and its phase relative to the voltage is . At low frequency it is inductive and lags toward ; at high frequency it is capacitive and leads toward . The ideal amplitude diverges at either extreme and has a finite minimum between them; real component losses and source electrical impedance limit those asymptotes.
Figure 1.
Original normalized source-current amplitude, phase and resistor-to-source-current ratio for an illustrative ideal parallel RLC circuit
. Details.
Zero phase requires cancellation of electrical susceptances:
The inductor and capacitor currents are nonzero, equal in magnitude and opposite in phase, while the resistor supplies the in-phase source current. energy oscillates between the reactive elements; dissipation occurs in the shunt resistor. A source-current maximum would describe a different, series-resonant circuit.
The specified ratio is
It exceeds when . Define and . The two positive endpoints are , so
The endpoints have geometric mean . Increasing the parallel resistance reduces dissipative loading and narrows this band, in contrast with increasing the resistance of a series RLC circuit. Equivalently, , with and . The parallel RLC bandwidth here belongs to the explicitly defined current ratio, not a half-maximum rule applied to a source-current peak that does not exist.
Here is potential energy, is the stationary state's total energy, and is its spatial probability amplitude. The wave function has time factor ; is a position probability density for a normalized state. Stationary plane-wave scattering solutions are idealizations described by probability-current ratios, or components of a normalizable wave packet.
Above an upward step, a classical particle is fully transmitted with reduced speed. Quantum mechanically the abrupt wavelength change generally produces both reflected and transmitted amplitudes even though both regions are classically allowed. With unit incident amplitude and no wave arriving from the right,
The reflected component has signed wavevector and the same wavenumber magnitude as the incident component. A finite potential jump with constant mass and no delta interaction requires continuity of and :
The probability current gives probability reflection and transmission and , with . The amplitude may exceed one without violating conservation of total probability, because the transmitted group speed is smaller.
For , let . The bounded right-hand solution is , an evanescent wave tail with amplitude penetration scale . It carries no outgoing probability current in an infinitely long forbidden half-space, so reflection is total. This differs from transmission through a finite potential barrier, where a second boundary can support quantum tunnelling.
For a downward step, replace by . The same boundary conditions give a nonzero negative , corresponding to a reflected amplitude with phase reversal. If reflection were forbidden, would require both and , impossible for a nonzero step. Reflection therefore does not require a classical potential barrier; the discontinuity of wavenumber mismatch is enough.
For the specified electron energies, , so the requested amplitude coefficients are
The corresponding probability coefficients are approximately and . electron mass cancels from these ratios; there is no need to invent an additional material effective mass.