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    Hari Rajagolkar's Avatar
    Hari Rajagolkar Posts: 1, Reputation: 1
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    #1

    Nov 9, 2013, 07:39 PM
    Total energy of body in circular motion
    Why total energy of a particle that moves along a circular path is always negative?
    ebaines's Avatar
    ebaines Posts: 12,131, Reputation: 1307
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    Nov 10, 2013, 08:44 AM
    I don't understand what you are getting at. For a particle in motion its kinetic energy is always positive, since always yields a positive number. Perhaps you're thinking of gravitational potential energy, which mathematically is negative? For a body in orbit the sum of PE + KE does indeed work out to be a negative number - this quantity is known as "orbital energy" and is conserved.
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