Newton’s second law is powerful but not always practical. When what matters is how fast a body will be moving after a certain stretch, without the instant-by-instant detail, the energy approach is more efficient. This chapter introduces energy, work as a transfer of energy, the bubble diagram, the energy table, and the conservation principle that governs every transformation.
Sections
- What is energy?
- Work done by a force
- Energy exchange diagrams
- Rules for connecting the bubbles
- Friction and thermal energy
- The loop-the-loop: an energy approach
- Thermal equilibrium
- Potential energy, equilibrium and turning points
- Multi-state problems