Stopping Distance
The biggest consequence of the square in Kinetic Energy is that a car going fast becomes a more dangerous object at a very rapid rate. Here are some numbers calculating kinetic energy for two identical cars: one going 20m/s and one going twice as fast. You can see that the 40 m/s car doesn't have twice the energy, but FOUR TIMES the energy. The right half of this slide shows that since brakes stop cars with a constant force, this means that for the twice as fast car, it needs FOUR TIMES the stopping distance. Don't speed in school zones, y'all.
Stopping Distance
The biggest consequence of the square in Kinetic Energy is that a car going fast becomes a more dangerous object at a very rapid rate. Here are some numbers calculating kinetic energy for two identical cars: one going 20m/s and one going twice as fast. You can see that the 40 m/s car doesn't have twice the energy, but FOUR TIMES the energy. The right half of this slide shows that since brakes stop cars with a constant force, this means that for the twice as fast car, it needs FOUR TIMES the stopping distance. Don't speed in school zones, y'all.