Kinetic energy and potential energy are the key components of the law of conservation of energy. Briefly, this law states that in a closed system, energy is not gained or lost.

Watch this video to learn more.

Kinetic and potential energy are important to the law of conservation of energy because they depict all of the energy in the system. When looking at the energy in any system, we look at the kinetic final as related to the kinetic initial and the potential final as related to the potential initial. The law of conservation of energy equation is written as follows: