Re:Why does kinetic energy increase quadratically, not linea...
by krackers on Saturday June 27, 2026 @09:12PM
(#48703365)
>Energy is force times distance
This is not true though, work is only necessary to change KE. An object can have kinetic energy even when no forces are presently acting on it (of course force was needed to bring it from resting to that state though)
An object which has a constant force applied will have it's distance increase quadratically with respect to time.
Energy is force times distance. Intuition: the energy it takes to lift an object up is proportional to the height you lift it to.
So if you apply a constant force, you get a constant acceleration which leads to a quadratically increasing distance.
If you accept that energy is force times distance, the energy required to move the object in this scenario increases quadratically.
This means that if you apply a force F for 1 second, the amount of energy that is imparted by that force depends on how fast the object is already going. The energy required to apply a force to an already fast moving object is much higher. Intuition: you have to expend all the energy required to get up to the moving object's speed before you can start applying a force. So there's a cost to even get in the game