Definition:Conservative Force

Definition

Definition 1

A conservative force is a force which gives rise to a conservative vector field.

That is, a vector field which acts on a particle $p$ in such a way that the work done on moving $p$ depends only on where it started and where it ended up, and not on the path taken to get there.

Definition 2

A conservative force is a force such that the work evaluated around every simple closed contour is zero.

Examples

Gravitation

An example of a conservative force is gravitation.

Also see

• Equivalence of Definitions of Conservative Force

• Results about conservative forces can be found here.

Sources

• 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): energy
• 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): energy