13.3 Gravitational potential energy and total energy  (Page 2/6)

Conservation of energy

In Potential Energy and Conservation of Energy , we described how to apply conservation of energy for systems with conservative forces. We were able to solve many problems, particularly those involving gravity, more simply using conservation of energy. Those principles and problem-solving strategies apply equally well here. The only change is to place the new expression for potential energy into the conservation of energy equation, $E=K_1+U_1=K_2+U_2$ .

Note that we use M , rather than $M_{\text{E}}$ , as a reminder that we are not restricted to problems involving Earth. However, we still assume that $m\text{<}\text{<}M$ . (For problems in which this is not true, we need to include the kinetic energy of both masses and use conservation of momentum to relate the velocities to each other. But the principle remains the same.)

Escape velocity

Escape velocity is often defined to be the minimum initial velocity of an object that is required to escape the surface of a planet (or any large body like a moon) and never return. As usual, we assume no energy lost to an atmosphere, should there be any.

Consider the case where an object is launched from the surface of a planet with an initial velocity directed away from the planet. With the minimum velocity needed to escape, the object would just come to rest infinitely far away, that is, the object gives up the last of its kinetic energy just as it reaches infinity, where the force of gravity becomes zero. Since $U\to 0\text{as}r\to \infty$ , this means the total energy is zero. Thus, we find the escape velocity    from the surface of an astronomical body of mass M and radius R by setting the total energy equal to zero. At the surface of the body, the object is located at $r_1=R$ and it has escape velocity $v_1=v_{\text{esc}}$ . It reaches $r_2=\infty$ with velocity $v_2=0$ . Substituting into [link] , we have