Difference between revisions of "Conservative force"
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Revision as of 13:40, July 11, 2016
Conservative forces are those that possess certain properties[1]:
1. The work it does on a particle is independent of its trajectory.
2. The work done on a particle that moves along a closed trajectory (where the initial and final positions are the same, or di = df) = 0) is zero.
3. The force can be written as the negative of the gradient of a potential energy function, i.e. 
.
When the only forces present in a system are conservative, mechanical energy is conserved.
Examples of conservative forces:
Example of a non-conservative force:
References
- ↑ Serway and Beichner, Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Fifth Edition
