Kinetic Energy

Significance

The energy of motion. Leibniz's vis viva of 1686 was mv²; the half arrived when Coriolis matched it to work in 1829, so that the work done accelerating a body equals exactly this. It is quadratic in speed, which is why a car at 100 km/h has four times the stopping energy of one at 50, and why the wind's power goes as the cube of its speed — this, times the mass arriving per second.