Mechanical energy 2026-10-03
Mechanical energy is the sum of kinetic energy and potential energy. It is conserved when all forces are conservative and the potential has no explicit time dependence.
A uniform solid sphere of mass and radius has the indicated moment of inertia about any diameter. Integrating the squared perpendicular distance against uniform mass density gives . It is different from the value for a thin spherical shell and determines the rotational contribution to kinetic energy during rolling without slipping.
For equal-mass elastic collisions, one reflection parametrization is and . The fixed- transformation preserves pairwise momentum, kinetic energy and velocity-pair measure. A nonnegative kernel invariant under particle interchange and collision reversal yields a gain-loss operator. Its weak Boltzmann collision identity proves conservation and its entropy identity proves the Boltzmann H theorem. Unlike the Maxwell molecule collision operator, this general kernel may depend on relative speed.
Integration by parts against , and gives these equations for mass, unnormalized momentum and kinetic energy. With , the mean is , and . Normalizing by mass is invalid if that mass is zero.