Some of the content of this guide was modeled after a guide published by OpenStax and has been adapted for the NWP Learning Commons in March 2022. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 International License.
Kinetic energy is defined as the energy of motion at speeds much less than the speed of light. At speeds approaching the speed of light, energy is defined by the special theory of relativity.
The kinetic energy of a body is one-half the product of the body's mass \(m\) and the square of its speed \(v\).
$$E_{k}=\frac{1}{2}{m}{v^2}$$