Rest Mass and Kinetic Energy

(Lecture: 10 minutes)

  • Continuation of previous lecture
  • Relativistic KE is approximately rest mass plus Newtonion KE

See §9.2 and (the middle of) §9.4 of the text.

Reflections

This is a one good place to show that the relativistic formula for energy reduces for speeds much less than the speed of light to the rest mass plus the Newtonian kinetic energy, plus higher order terms. An alternative is to wait until discussing conservation of energy, as in the text.


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