alt Hacker NewsCheat answer: velocity is a vector, and can be negative, while KE is a scalar and has to be positive. Therefore you have to square v to get rid of the minus sign.
Why not take the absolute value? Nature hates those, probably because the derivative is undefined at 0. So squaring it is.
Replies
johanyc • today at 5:22 PM
That's mnemonic not intuition.
qzw • today at 1:58 AM
That doesn’t answer the title question of why it’s quadratic wrt speed.
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terminalbraid • today at 1:09 PM
> Why not take the absolute value? Nature hates those
And yet inverse distance laws for potential energy for gravity and electric fields use the absolute value because they require an unsigned distance and how you treat the singularity at zero is extremely important to the structure of those interactions
I like to think of it as dot product being the true "natural" space to compare magnitude metrics, whereas absolute value is just a human construct conceived for our mental convenience. A smooth parabolic bowl vs an unnatural sharp conical tip. Also shows up in standard deviation etc.
Aside: I wonder if complex values neural networks with activation function just being sum(inputs)*conj(sum(inputs)) with threshold normalized by sqrt(num_inputs) could be the most universal, where incoherent inputs will average an absolute value of sqrt(N) and coherent inputs are N like lasers? (square amplitude would be N vs N^2 between uncorrected and correlated population)