ftr said:
modern physics does not care about what things are called only that the equations work.
This is why, after reading Factcheckers reference, I did some maths.
Émilie_du_Châtelet#
Advocacy_of_kinetic_energy
"Simply put, there is no 'momentum friction' and momentum can not transfer between different forms, and particularly there is no potential momentum. Emmy Noether proved this to be true for all problems where the initial state is symmetric in generalized coordinates."
Looking at some simple equations:
ke = 1/2 m v^2
pe = mgh
p = mv
It seems to me that momentum can be derived from either of the two energy equations.
√(2*mass*ke) = p(kinetic)
√(2*mass*pe) = p(potential)
So the part I bolded struck me as incorrect.
Though, it may be correct in the full context of the statement, as I'm not sure what is meant by "
the initial state is symmetric in generalized coordinates"
But anyways, this took me back to the original question:
cosmic onion said:
So why did it take over 100 years from approx 1690 to 1790 for energy being direclty proportional to v squared to be accepted by the wider scientific community.
My guess, is clocks.
Going through the history of timekeeping in wikipedia, I discovered that Huygen's made the first accurate clock. And it was a pendulum clock. Now I've done pendulum experiments before, but I've never used a pendulum as a timekeeping device.
So I googled further, and found:
Now, I've obviously left out a couple of hundred years of scientific history, as by 1790, someone obviously figured out how to measure speed accurately enough to determine that it was v
2, and not v.
And that, is my final answer: Clocks