title: Michael Vick

text: In February 2009, the Falcons revealed that they were exploring trading Vick to another NFL team. Atlanta general manager Thomas Dimitroff said NFL rules allowed teams to trade the contractual rights to suspended players. The Falcons released Vick in early June, however, making him an unrestricted free agent.


title: Michael Vick

text: After his release from prison, Vick was mentored by former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy. The prospect of his return to professional football was the subject of much conjecture as his suspension and incarceration continued. In 2007, ESPN's John Clayton said few general managers were in a strong enough position to consider taking a chance on Vick, and even then most NFL owners would be concerned about a fan and media backlash. There was also no chance of Vick resurrecting his career in the Canadian Football League, he said. Following a furor in 2007 over Ricky Williams playing there while serving a suspension, the CFL banned players currently suspended by the NFL. In any case, Clayton said it would be nearly impossible for a convicted felon to get a Canadian work visa. He did think, however, that Vick would be "unstoppable" if he decided to play in the Arena Football League.


title: Michael Vick

text: Vick signed a one-year contract with the Philadelphia Eagles on August 13, 2009. The contract was worth $1.6 million, with no money guaranteed. It contained a team option for the 2010 season worth $5 million. Vick was allowed to participate in all team practices and meetings as well as the Eagles' last two preseason games. He was eligible to play in the third week of the regular season. Starting quarterback Donovan McNabb told reporters he gave coach Andy Reid the idea to sign Vick.


title: Michael Vick

text: Vick was activated to the 53-man roster in mid-September and played sparingly for the rest of the season as McNabb's backup. In week 13 against the Falcons, Vick both threw and ran for a touchdown, his first scores since December 2006. Vick was voted by teammates as the winner of the Ed Block Courage Award in December. The award honors players who "exemplify commitment to the principles of sportsmanship and courage". "It means a great deal to me," Vick said at the time. "I was voted unanimously by my teammates. They know what I've been through. I've been through a lot. It's been great to come back and have an opportunity to play and be with a great group of guys. I'm just ecstatic about that and I enjoy every day." The Eagles finished the season with an 11–5 record, making the playoffs. In the team's NFC wildcard game against the Dallas Cowboys on January 9, 2010, Vick threw the longest touchdown pass of his career to rookie Jeremy Maclin for a 76-yard touchdown. The Eagles lost the game 34–14.


title: Michael Vick

text: Reid named Donovan McNabb the Eagles' starter for the 2010 season, but McNabb was traded to the Washington Redskins and Kevin Kolb was named the starter. While relegated to a second-string role, Vick said he knew he could still play at a high level. Asked if he wanted the Eagles to pick up the second year of his contract, he said, "I hope so...I feel like I'm probably better than I ever was in my career, as far as the mental aspect of the game." The Eagles exercised his option for 2010 in March and Vick received a $1.5 million roster bonus.


title: Michael Vick

text: Reid named Vick the Eagles' starting quarterback on September 21 after Kolb suffered a concussion, and Vick performed well in his stead. In his second game as an Eagles starter versus the Jacksonville Jaguars, Vick led the Eagles to a 28–3 win, throwing for 291 yards and three touchdowns and rushing for another touchdown. He was named the NFC Offensive Player of the Month for September. Vick suffered a rib cartilage injury in a week 4 game against the Redskins, and was replaced by Kolb. Vick had passed for 49 yards with three carries for 17 yards in the game prior to the injury.


title: Michael Vick

text: In a Week 10 "Monday Night Football" matchup against the Washington Redskins on November 14, Vick passed for 333 yards and four touchdowns, while rushing for 80 yards and another two touchdowns. Vick threw an 88-yard touchdown pass to DeSean Jackson on the first play from scrimmage in the game, and went on to help lead the Eagles to a 59–28 victory. Vick was named the NFC Offensive Player of the Week following his performance, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame asked for his game jersey to display after he became the first player to pass for three touchdowns and rush for two touchdowns in the first half of a game. In a game later in the season against the New York Giants, Vick led a fourth-quarter rally to erase a 21-point deficit. He accounted for three touchdowns to tie the game with under two minutes left. DeSean Jackson returned the Giants' last punt of the game for a touchdown to win the game for the Eagles as time expired. Vick finished the season with 3,018 yards passing, 21 touchdowns and six interceptions with a passer rating of 100.2. He had 100 carries for 676 yards and nine touchdowns. Philadelphia ended with a 10–6 record in 2010 and made the playoffs. The team lost to the Packers 21–16 in the wildcard round, however.


title: Michael Vick

text: Vick made his fourth Pro Bowl after the season and was named the Eagles' starting quarterback. The "Associated Press" and "Sporting News" named him the NFL Comeback Player of the Year. He also won the Bert Bell Award on March 4, 2011. Vick finished second in the NFL Offensive Player of the Year with 11 first place votes and NFL MVP both awarded to Tom Brady who won MVP unanimously . In early 2011, the Eagles placed their franchise tag on Vick. He signed the one-year tender on March 2. On August 29, however, Vick and the Eagles announced they had agreed on a 6-year, $100 million contract with almost $40 million in guaranteed money.


title: Michael Vick

text: Led by Vick, Philadelphia finished the 2011 season with an 8–8 record. The team began with a 4–8 record before winning four games in a row to finish the season. The final game of the season was a 34–10 victory on January 1, 2012 at home against the Washington Redskins. Vick completed 24 of his 39 passes for 335 yards and three touchdowns.


title: Michael Vick

text: Vick came into week one of the 2012 season as the starter, despite a solid showing from rookie Nick Foles in the preseason. Vick led the Eagles to a 17–16 victory in week one against the Cleveland Browns despite throwing four interceptions. The Eagles won their following game against the Baltimore Ravens, but lost 27–6 in the third week of the season to the Arizona Cardinals. Facing former teammate Kevin Kolb, Vick completed only 17 of 37 passes with no touchdowns and two lost fumbles. The Eagles went on to beat the New York Giants, but then lost three straight games. After the third loss against the Falcons on October 28, calls for coach Andy Reid to replace Vick with Foles intensified. Reid refused to make the move.


title: Michael Vick

text: The Eagles lost another game against the New Orleans Saints, and Vick remained the starting quarterback for a week 10 game against the Dallas Cowboys. Vick was injured in that game, which the Eagles lost, and was replaced by Foles. On December 3, after Vick had already been sidelined for three weeks, Reid officially named Foles the starter for the remainder of the season. After a Foles injury in week 16, Vick was named the starter for the season finale against the Giants in New York. Vick went 19 of 35 for 197 yards with a touchdown and interception, and also ran five times for 25 yards. The Eagles, however, lost the game 42–7, to end the season with a 1–5 division record and 4–12 overall record.


title: Michael Vick

text: On February 11, 2013, the Eagles and Vick agreed on a one-year restructured contract worth up to $10 million. New head coach Chip Kelly announced that Vick, Foles, and rookie Matt Barkley would compete for the starting job. After a stellar preseason, Vick was able to reclaim his starting job from Foles, who was named Vick's backup.


title: Michael Vick

text: Vick started out well, winning his first game against the Redskins and throwing his first career 400 yard game in a close loss to the Chargers, with 4 passing touchdowns, 2 rushing touchdowns, and no interceptions in the two game stretch. After that, Vick suffered losses against Kansas City and Denver, where he threw for 1 touchdown and 3 INTs in that stretch (all 3 were thrown against Kansas City). In a game against the Giants, Vick was 6–14 for 105 yards, when he suffered a hamstring injury. Nick Foles played stellar in his place, going 8–2 as starter, while throwing 27 touchdowns to only 2 interceptions with a 119.0 passer rating. Vick saw his only playing time in a 15–7 loss to the Giants, where he was 6–9 for 30 yards and an interception, but he again suffered an injury, this time to his quadriceps, and was replaced by rookie Matt Barkley, who played even worse. Foles returned the following week, and Vick spent the rest of the season as the backup, making only one more appearance in a blowout win over the Chicago Bears.


title: Michael Vick

text: Vick signed a one-year $5 million contract with the New York Jets on March 21, 2014, the same day the Jets released Mark Sanchez. The Eagles signed Sanchez one week later.


title: Michael Vick

text: Vick chose to wear #8 as a tribute to Steve Young, although several days later he decided to change it to #1, as #7 was already taken by Geno Smith. Vick became the first quarterback in franchise history to wear the number. During Week 5 against the San Diego Chargers, Vick came in relief of a struggling Geno Smith following halftime and finished the game with 47 passing yards as the Jets were shut out by the Chargers, 31–0. After seven consecutive losses, Rex Ryan named Vick the starter over Smith for the Week 9 game against the Kansas City Chiefs. Vick became the first quarterback to reach 6,000 rushing yards during Week 10, in a 20–13 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, which was one of three games that Vick started for the season.


title: Michael Vick

text: On August 25, 2015, Vick signed a one-year contract with the Pittsburgh Steelers worth $970,000. With Ben Roethlisberger wearing #7 and #1 being unofficially retired for Gary Anderson, Vick wore #2.


title: Michael Vick

text: His signing by the Steelers caused a social media backlash by many Steeler fans, with some saying that they would never support the team again. Fans who supported or were indifferent about the signing called such fans fair weather fans, and also cited that the Steelers have several players with questionable pasts, most notably Roethlisberger and James Harrison. The Animal Rescue League of Western Pennsylvania made a subtle jab at the team on Twitter by saying that they were now more proud to support the Pittsburgh Penguins and subsequently moved an upcoming fundraiser event from Heinz Field to Consol Energy Center. Steelers president Art Rooney II defended the Vick signing on KDKA-TV, saying that they felt that Vick had proven himself since being released from prison. The Steelers had considered signing Vick in 2009—both Vick and Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin are from the same part of Virginia and know each other well personally—but decided against it due to potential backlash since Vick at the time hadn't proven himself following his release from prison.


title: Michael Vick

text: In Week 3, Vick was brought into action against the St. Louis Rams after Roethlisberger sustained a knee injury that sidelined him for 4–6 weeks. In five weeks, Vick threw 40 for 66, with two touchdowns and one interception, also rushing for 99 yards on 20 attempts. Vick suffered a hamstring injury in a win against the Arizona Cardinals and was replaced by Landry Jones. Vick would miss six games, by which time Roethlisberger had returned to his starting role. Vick would be inactive the remainder of the season, leading some sports commentators to speculate that Vick's playing career may be over.


title: Michael Vick

text: In 2016, Vick announced he would play one more season in the NFL. However, after not signing with a team all season, he officially announced his retirement from professional football on February 3, 2017. On June 12, 2017, Vick retired as an Atlanta Falcon.


title: Michael Vick

text: On June 28, 2017, Vick began participating in the newly-formed American Flag Football League, serving as captain of Team Vick. The following year, he captained the Roadrunners, who ultimately lost to Chad Johnson's team in the AFFL semifinal 26–13.


title: Michael Vick

text: During their 2017 training camp, Vick joined his former coach Andy Reid as a coaching intern with the Kansas City Chiefs after stating his previous interest in coaching.


title: Michael Vick

text: After the Chiefs concluded their 2017 training camp, he become an NFL analyst on "Fox NFL Kickoff" on FS1.


title: Michael Vick

text: On April 25, 2018, Vick was hired as offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Legends of the Alliance of American Football. Vick said, regarding becoming a coach, "I didn’t think I ever wanted to coach but talking about the game at Fox, I get excited like I’m out there playing again. But, it’s still not touching individuals. When the opportunity came about, I felt like I could really make a difference and give back to the game. …Once I found out it was in Atlanta, I thought it was a home run." Shortly before the season began, head coach Kevin Coyle announced Vick would no longer serve as offensive coordinator, but would still remain with the team as a consultant.


title: Michael Vick

text: On May 20, 2022, reports surfaced that Vick planned to return to football and play for an undisclosed team in the Fan Controlled Football league. Vick was reportedly inspired by seeing the success Terrell Owens was having in the league. Two days later, Vick denied this and said that he will not come out of retirement.


title: Michael Vick

text: Between his selection by the Atlanta Falcons in the 2001 NFL Draft and early 2007, Vick was allegedly involved in several incidents:


title: Michael Vick

text: A search warrant executed on April 25, 2007, as part of a drug investigation of Vick's cousin Davon Boddie led to discovery of evidence of unlawful dog fighting activities at a property owned by Vick in rural Surry County in southeastern Virginia, with extensive facilities for the activity. Media attention quickly grew as state officials investigated, soon joined by federal authorities. As separate state and federal investigations progressed, more details emerged about an interstate dog-fighting ring that involved drugs and gambling. Gruesome details of abuse, torture, and execution of under-performing dogs galvanized animal rights activists and expressions of public outrage. Vick and several others were indicted on federal and Virginia state felony charges related to the operation.


title: Michael Vick

text: In July 2007, Vick and three other men were indicted on federal felony charges of operating an unlawful interstate dog fighting venture known as "Bad Newz Kennels". Vick was accused of financing the operation, directly participating in dog fights and executions, and personally handling thousands of dollars in related gambling activities. Federal prosecutors indicated they intended to proceed under the provisions of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization.


title: Michael Vick

text: By August 20, Vick and the other three co-defendants agreed to separate plea bargains for the federal charges. They were expected to each receive federal prison sentences of between one and five years. Four days later, Vick filed plea documents with the federal court. He pleaded guilty to "Conspiracy to Travel in Interstate Commerce in Aid of Unlawful Activities and to Sponsor a Dog in an Animal Fighting Venture". Vick admitted to providing most of the financing for the operation, and to participating directly in several dog fights in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and South Carolina. He admitted to sharing in the proceeds from these dog fights. He further admitted that he knew his colleagues killed several dogs who did not perform well. He admitted to being involved in the destruction of 6–8 dogs, by hanging or drowning. The "victimization and killing of pit bulls" was considered an aggravating circumstance, allowing prosecutors to exceed the federal sentencing guidelines for the charge. Vick denied placing any side bets on the dogfights. On August 27, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson accepted Vick's guilty plea, but reminded Vick that he (Hudson) was under no obligation to accept the prosecution's recommendation of a reduced sentence.


title: Michael Vick

text: While free on bail, Vick tested positive for marijuana in a random drug test. This was a violation of the conditions of his release while awaiting sentencing in federal court. Vick's positive urine sample was submitted on September 13, 2007, according to a document filed by a federal probation officer on September 26. As a result, Hudson ordered Vick confined to his Hampton, Virginia home between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. with electronic monitoring until his court hearing date in December. He was ordered to submit to random drug testing.


title: Michael Vick

text: In November, Vick turned himself in early to begin accruing time-served credit against his likely federal prison sentence. He was held at Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia awaiting sentencing on the federal convictions. On December 10, Vick appeared in U.S. District Court in Richmond for sentencing. Judge Hudson said he was "convinced that it was not a momentary lack of judgment" on Vick's part, and that Vick was a "full partner" in the dog fighting ring, and he was sentenced to serve 23 months in federal prison. Hudson noted that despite Vick's claim to have accepted responsibility for his actions, his failure to cooperate fully with federal officials, coupled with a failed drug test and a failed polygraph, showed that he had not taken full responsibility for "promoting, funding and facilitating this cruel and inhumane sporting activity". Vick was assigned to United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth, a federal prison facility in Leavenworth, Kansas, to serve his sentence.


title: Michael Vick

text: At the request of federal authorities before sentencing, Vick agreed to deposit nearly $1 million in an escrow account with attorneys to reimburse others for the costs of caring for the confiscated dogs, most of which were being offered for adoption on a selective basis under supervision of a court-appointed specialist. Experts said some of the animals would require special care for the rest of their lives. During the administration of his bankruptcy case, the U.S. Department of Labor complained that these funds were paid at least partially with unlawfully withdrawn monies that Vick held in trust for himself and eight other employees of MV7, a celebrity marketing company he owned.


title: Michael Vick

text: Separate Virginia charges against all four defendants in the dog-fighting case were brought following indictments by the Surry County grand jury when it met on September 25, 2007. The principal evidence considered was sworn statements of the defendants during their plea agreement process before the federal court. Vick was charged with two class-6 felonies, which each carried a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment.


title: Michael Vick

text: Citing the high costs and transportation logistics of proceeding while Vick was still in federal prison, state prosecutor Gerald Poindexter decided to postpone Vick's trial in Surry County Circuit Court until after Vick's release from federal custody. Vick's attorneys sought to resolve the state charges sooner. On October 14, 2008, Vick attorney Lawrence Woodward filed a motion to enter a plea via two-way electronic video with the Surry County Courts. Vick planned to plead guilty to state charges in an effort to get early release from federal prison and enter a halfway house. The request for a trial without Vick physically present was denied, but Poindexter agreed to hold the state trial while Vick was still in federal custody if Vick bore the costs of his transportation to Virginia and related expenses.


title: Michael Vick

text: Vick was transported to Virginia in November 2008 to face the state charges. He appeared before the Surry County Circuit Court on November 25 at a session held in neighboring Sussex County because the Surry court building was undergoing renovation. He submitted a guilty plea to a single Virginia felony charge for dog fighting, receiving a 3-year prison sentence suspended on condition of good behavior, and a $2,500 fine. In return for the plea agreement, the other charge was dropped. Michael Dwayne Vick, Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) ID# 33765-183, was released on July 20, 2009.


title: Michael Vick

text: Vick has lobbied for H.R. 2492, the Animal Fighting Spectator Prohibition Act, which would establish federal misdemeanor penalties for spectators of illegal animal fighting and make it a felony for adults to bring children to fights.


title: Michael Vick

text: At the end of 2006, "Sports Illustrated" magazine estimated Vick's annual income between his NFL salary and endorsements at $25.4 million, ranking him just below NASCAR's Dale Earnhardt Jr. in a listing of highest earning athletes. Vick's finances suffered, however, from poor management, bad investments and lawsuits. Certified Financial Planner Michael Smith advised Vick from 2003-2005, but resigned after Vick took bad advice from friends, made ill-conceived investments, overspent, and otherwise undermined the wealth-building plan that Smith had created. Smith's plan was for Vick to have a net wealth of $100 million by 2010; by that date Vick was actually an estimated $20 million in debt.


title: Michael Vick

text: In 2006, a $45 million lawsuit was pending in a dispute with Vick's original sports agents. Several lucrative endorsement deals soured.


title: Michael Vick

text: After the dog fighting indictments were announced in July 2007, financial claims against Vick escalated. His financial affairs strained, Vick was unable to meet scheduled payments and other obligations. Within several months, he had been named in numerous lawsuits by banks and creditors for defaulting on loans, some of them related to business investments. The dog fighting property near Smithfield, Virginia had been liquidated earlier, and in November 2007, Vick attempted to sell another of his homes.


title: Michael Vick

text: As he served his sentence in the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, friends and family continued to occupy some of Vick's other homes in the South Beach section of Miami Beach, Florida. In June 2008, when Vick's brother, Marcus, was arrested and jailed in Norfolk after a police chase, he listed his residence as a $1.39 million home owned by Vick in an exclusive riverfront community in Suffolk, Virginia. Construction of a new riverfront home took place on land Vick owned in another exclusive section of Suffolk. His attorneys later estimated that he was spending $30,000 a month to support seven friends and relatives, including his mother and brother, three children, and their mothers.


title: Michael Vick

text: On July 7, 2008, Vick sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Newport News after failing to "work out consensual resolutions with each of his creditors," according to court papers. The initial filing, which was incomplete, listed assets of less than $50 million and debts of between $10 million and $50 million. The seven largest creditors without collateral backing their claims were owed a total of $12.8 million. The three biggest unsecured creditors were Joel Enterprises Inc., owed $4.5 million for breach of contract; Atlanta Falcons, owed $3.75 million for a pro-rated signing bonus; and Royal Bank of Canada, owed $2.5 million in loans.


title: Michael Vick

text: Joel Enterprises of Richmond was listed as one of Vick's larger creditors. Sports agents Andrew Joel and Dave Lowman claimed Vick signed a contract with their firm in 2001, nine days before he announced he was leaving Virginia Tech early and declaring himself eligible for the NFL Draft. With his mother as a witness, Vick signed a five-year marketing agreement that anticipated a wide range of endorsement activities using Vick's name, likeness, voice, and reputation. Joel's cut was 25% of all deals, excluding Vick's NFL contract, according to the agreement. Vick attempted to end the relationship with Joel Enterprises a few weeks later, and entered into another relationship with other agents. In 2005, Joel Enterprises sued Vick in Richmond Circuit Court for $45 million in compensatory and punitive damages for breach of contract. After the Virginia Supreme Court denied a Vick motion and ruled that the civil trial could proceed in December 2006, the parties agreed to submit the dispute to binding arbitration for resolution instead of a formal civil court trial. The outcome of the case was an award of $4.5 million to Joel.


title: Michael Vick

text: The Atlanta Falcons sought to recover a portion of Vick's $37 million 2004 signing bonus. A reduced amount of $20 million was awarded to the Falcons in binding legal arbitration, which Vick disputed. The sides agreed to reduce the amount to between $6.5 and $7.5 million. The bankruptcy court was advised of this Vick-Falcons settlement agreement on April 3, 2009.


title: Michael Vick

text: On September 20, 2007, the Royal Bank of Canada filed a civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Newport News against Vick for more than $2.3 million over a loan tied to real estate. The suit claimed Vick failed to meet a September 10 deadline to repay. On May 7, 2008, the court granted a motion for summary judgment against Vick for default and breach of a promissory note and ordered him to pay the bank more than $2.5 million.


title: Michael Vick

text: On September 26, 2007, 1st Source Bank, based in South Bend, Indiana, claimed damages of at least $2 million in a federal lawsuit, alleging Vick and Divine Seven LLC of Atlanta refused to pay for at least 130 vehicles acquired to be used as rental cars. The bank's Specialty Financing Group provided financing for rental car fleets.


title: Michael Vick

text: Wachovia Bank also filed a federal suit in October 2007 in Atlanta seeking about $940,000 from Vick and Gerald Frank Jenkins, a business partner. The bank claimed the two men and their business, Atlantic Wine & Package LLC, defaulted on a May 2006 loan of $1.3 million to set up a wine shop and restaurant. Jenkins, a retired surgeon who owned Atlantic Wine since 2004, brought Vick in as an investor. In May 2008, the U.S. District Court in Atlanta granted a summary judgment in favor of Wachovia. The judgment of $1.11 million included the initial principal balance, interest accrued, fees, overdrawn accounts, and legal fees. The order provided that further interest could be accrued.


title: Michael Vick

text: The United States Department of Labor filed another lawsuit in federal district court in Newport News on March 25, 2009, alleging Vick and others violated federal employee benefits laws by withdrawing $1.35 million from a retirement plan sponsored by MV7, one of Vick's companies. The money was held in trust under pension laws to fund retirement plans for nine MV7 employees. The Labor Department simultaneously filed a complaint in federal bankruptcy court to prevent Vick from discharging his alleged debt to the MV7 pension plan. The complaint alleged that some of the funds were used to pay restitution ordered in his dogfighting case.


title: Michael Vick

text: In August 2008, trustee W. Clarkson McDow Jr. was appointed to manage Vick's bankruptcy. The trustee noted in court documents that Vick "has limited ability to arrange his finances and limited ability to participate in the bankruptcy case on an in-person basis." McDow wrote in court documents that it appeared Vick had "routinely relied upon others to make financial decisions for him, giving them discretionary control over large sums of money". McDow named Mary Wong and David A. Talbot as people who had obtained broad written authority to act as his attorney-in-fact over all of his financial affairs.


title: Michael Vick

text: Vick had hired Wong, a business manager in Omaha, Nebraska, in the fall of 2007 on the recommendation of Falcons teammate Demorrio Williams. Wong helped cash in some of Vick's investments to provide restitution funds required by the federal court in his criminal case. According to a document filed by one of Vick's attorneys, she used a power of attorney from Vick to "wrongfully remove" at least another $900,000 from his various accounts. Court papers also alleged Wong "caused certain business entities owned by [Vick] to be transferred to her." Vick learned later that Wong had been permanently barred from working with any firm that traded on the New York Stock Exchange as the result of taking more than $150,000 from two elderly widows she met while working at Wells Fargo.


title: Michael Vick

text: Vick next turned to Talbot, a medical school graduate from Hackensack, New Jersey who claimed to have expertise in financial management. Vick later told the court he met Talbot in April 2008 through his brother, Marcus. Talbot was to be paid $15,000 per month and took possession of one of Vick's cars, an $85,000 Mercedes-Benz. Vick later discovered that Talbot's résumé contained numerous false statements. Talbot had been accused of defrauding church members in New Jersey. The New Jersey Attorney General started legal action against Talbot for securities fraud over an alleged scheme to defraud investors of more than $500,000 by offering them "asset enhancement contracts" to be used to build a new church. U.S. bankruptcy Judge Frank Santoro ordered that the Mercedes-Benz Vick gave Talbot be repossessed and sold, and that Talbot appear at a hearing on September 5.


title: Michael Vick

text: Paul K. Campsen, one of Vick's lawyers, told the court that Vick "has supported his mother, brother, fiancée and his two children" over the years. He said Vick's financial problems included average monthly expenses of $12,225 for several large homes his family and friends were living in and a monthly income of just $277.69.


title: Michael Vick

text: Vick's attorneys filed a first plan of reorganization through bankruptcy on November 12, 2008. Under the plan, Vick was to sell three of his six homes. Vick's expenses, meanwhile, included support payments of approximately $30,000 a month. They included $14,531 a month to his mother, $12,363 a month to his fiancée and two daughters, and $3,500 a month to his former girlfriend Tameka Taylor, with whom he had a child. Creditors challenged Vick's spending plan given his loss of salary and suspension from the NFL. Vick's attorneys told the judge on November 13 that Vick "has every reason to believe that upon his release, he will be reinstated into the NFL, resume his career and be able to earn a substantial living."


title: Michael Vick

text: After creditors objected to the initial reorganization plan, Vick appeared in person before Santoro at a hearing in Newport News on April 2, 2009. Santoro had decided not to allow testimony by video in March, saying he needed Vick in the courtroom to assess his demeanor and credibility. Vick testified that he intended to live a better life after prison. He said his crime was "heinous" and he felt "true remorse." Near the end of the hearing, Santoro rejected the plan as unsound, saying that it was too strongly predicated on Vick's return to the NFL and the substantial projected income it would bring, neither of which was assured.


title: Michael Vick

text: The judge commended Vick for trying to work out his financial mess after years of poor choices, but told Vick the numbers did not add up. Santoro adjourned the case and told Vick to work with his advisers to create a new plan, suggesting Vick begin by liquidating one or both of his Virginia homes, as well as three of the cars he intended to keep, and "buy a house more within his means." Vick had testified that he felt obligated to provide for friends and family because of "where he had come from." Santoro told Vick that while that was commendable, "You cannot be everything to everybody. If you do, you're going to be nothing to anybody."


title: Michael Vick

text: On April 28, attorneys met with Santoro and said they made substantial progress on a revised plan. They reported having settled all disputes with Vick's creditors, including Joel. On August 27, Santoro approved the revised reorganization plan. It was supported by all of Vick's creditors but one who was owed $13,000. Every creditor was to be paid back in six years on the condition that an estimated $9 million in assets be liquidated. Vick was allowed annual living expenses of $300,000 under the plan. He could spend up to $3,500 a month for rent in Philadelphia and $750 for "utilities and miscellaneous." He was to pay $3,712 a month on the mortgage for his house in Hampton, Virginia, where his fiancée and two children lived, and could pay up to $1,355 per month in private school tuition for his children. Vick was also given up to $472 a month in car-related expenses. His mother was allowed $2,500 per month, and his former girlfriend Tameka Taylor was allotted $3,000 per month to support their son, Mitez. Vick was not required to pay creditors during his first season with the Eagles. Vick paid his agent, Joel Segal, $32,500 in 2010, $104,000 in 2011, and would pay him $160,000 each year from 2012–2015 for a total of $776,500. He paid bankruptcy lawyers $748,750 in 2010, $1 million in 2011, and a total of $2.6 million.


title: Michael Vick

text: During his career with the Falcons, Vick became a spokesperson for many companies. He had endorsement contracts with companies including Nike, EA Sports, Coca-Cola, Powerade, Kraft, Rawlings, Hasbro, and AirTran.


title: Michael Vick

text: Even before the animal cruelty case surfaced in 2007, however, Vick's corporate status had deteriorated. Among the negative incidents was his middle finger gesture to Atlanta football fans in 2006. Vick's first endorsement after being released from prison was a two-year deal on January 27, 2011 with Unequal Technologies, a company that produces football pads. Nike officially signed Vick again as an athlete on July 1, 2011. The company had been supplying him with complimentary gear since October 2009; his re-signing marked the first time a sponsor had brought back an athlete after dropping him.


title: Michael Vick

text: In 2012, Vick launched a sports clothing line called V7 to be sold exclusively at Modell's. Part of the proceeds was to go to the Boys and Girls Club of Philadelphia.


title: Michael Vick

text: Vick has been a principal in two charitable foundations, the Michael Vick Foundation and The Vick Foundation. In June 2006, Vick, along with his brother Marcus and mother Brenda, established The Vick Foundation, a nonprofit organization to support at-risk youth with after-school programs in the Metro Atlanta and Hampton Roads areas. The announcement of the new organization came just before the start of the foundation's first fundraiser, the Michael Vick Golf Classic. The inaugural event was held at the prestigious Kingsmill Golf Course in James City County near Williamsburg, Virginia in partnership with The Virginia Tech Alumni Association Tidewater Chapter, and raised more than $80,000 for charity. According to its 2006 federal tax return, the Michael Vick Foundation provided 100 backpacks to poor children in Newport News and paid for an after-school program. The foundation spent 12% of its 2006 budget – $20,590 of $171,823 – on charitable programs and paid its fundraiser, Susan Bass Roberts, a former spokeswoman for Vick, $97,000. The foundation ceased operations that year. One of Vick's financial advisers withdrew $50,000 – most of the remaining funds – from its checking account in 2008.


title: Michael Vick

text: After the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007, Vick and the United Way donated $10,000 to assist families affected. The Vick Foundation collected donations from communities in Atlanta and Virginia to be placed in the United In Caring Fund for Victims of the Virginia Tech Tragedy and a special fund at the United Way of Montgomery, Radford and Floyd counties, which serves the Virginia Tech area. The Vick Foundation said the money would be used to provide help with funeral expenses, transportation for family members and other support services.


title: Energy

text: In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, "enérgeia", “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat and light. It is a standard mechanical quantity. Energy is a conserved quantity—the law of conservation of energy states that energy can be converted in form, but not created or destroyed. The unit of measurement for energy in the International System of Units (SI) is the joule (J).


title: Energy

text: Common forms of energy include the kinetic energy of a moving object, the potential energy stored by an object (for instance due to its position in a field), the elastic energy stored in a solid object, chemical energy associated with chemical reactions, the radiant energy carried by electromagnetic radiation, and the internal energy contained within a thermodynamic system. All living organisms constantly take in and release energy.


title: Energy

text: Due to mass–energy equivalence, any object that has mass when stationary (called rest mass) also has an equivalent amount of energy whose form is called rest energy, and any additional energy (of any form) acquired by the object above that rest energy will increase the object's total mass just as it increases its total energy.


title: Energy

text: Human civilization requires energy to function, which it gets from energy resources such as fossil fuels, nuclear fuel, or renewable energy. The Earth's climate and ecosystems processes are driven by the energy the planet receives from the Sun (although a small amount is also contributed by geothermal energy).


title: Energy

text: The total energy of a system can be subdivided and classified into potential energy, kinetic energy, or combinations of the two in various ways. Kinetic energy is determined by the movement of an object – or the composite motion of the components of an object – and potential energy reflects the potential of an object to have motion, and generally is a function of the position of an object within a field or may be stored in the field itself.


title: Energy

text: While these two categories are sufficient to describe all forms of energy, it is often convenient to refer to particular combinations of potential and kinetic energy as its own form. For example, the sum of translational and rotational kinetic and potential energy within a system is referred to as mechanical energy, whereas nuclear energy refers to the combined potentials within an atomic nucleus from either the nuclear force or the weak force, among other examples.


title: Energy

text: The word "energy" derives from the , which possibly appears for the first time in the work of Aristotle in the 4th century BC. In contrast to the modern definition, energeia was a qualitative philosophical concept, broad enough to include ideas such as happiness and pleasure.


title: Energy

text: In the late 17th century, Gottfried Leibniz proposed the idea of the , or living force, which defined as the product of the mass of an object and its velocity squared; he believed that total "vis viva" was conserved. To account for slowing due to friction, Leibniz theorized that thermal energy consisted of the motions of the constituent parts of matter, although it would be more than a century until this was generally accepted. The modern analog of this property, kinetic energy, differs from "vis viva" only by a factor of two. Writing in the early 18th century, Émilie du Châtelet proposed the concept of conservation of energy in the marginalia of her French language translation of Newton's "Principia Mathematica", which represented the first formulation of a conserved measurable quantity that was distinct from momentum, and which would later be called "energy".


title: Energy

text: In 1807, Thomas Young was possibly the first to use the term "energy" instead of "vis viva", in its modern sense. Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis described "kinetic energy" in 1829 in its modern sense, and in 1853, William Rankine coined the term "potential energy". The law of conservation of energy was also first postulated in the early 19th century, and applies to any isolated system. It was argued for some years whether heat was a physical substance, dubbed the caloric, or merely a physical quantity, such as momentum. In 1845 James Prescott Joule discovered the link between mechanical work and the generation of heat.


title: Energy

text: These developments led to the theory of conservation of energy, formalized largely by William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) as the field of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics aided the rapid development of explanations of chemical processes by Rudolf Clausius, Josiah Willard Gibbs, and Walther Nernst. It also led to a mathematical formulation of the concept of entropy by Clausius and to the introduction of laws of radiant energy by Jožef Stefan. According to Noether's theorem, the conservation of energy is a consequence of the fact that the laws of physics do not change over time. Thus, since 1918, theorists have understood that the law of conservation of energy is the direct mathematical consequence of the translational symmetry of the quantity conjugate to energy, namely time.


title: Energy

text: In 1843, James Prescott Joule independently discovered the mechanical equivalent in a series of experiments. The most famous of them used the "Joule apparatus": a descending weight, attached to a string, caused rotation of a paddle immersed in water, practically insulated from heat transfer. It showed that the gravitational potential energy lost by the weight in descending was equal to the internal energy gained by the water through friction with the paddle.


title: Energy

text: In the International System of Units (SI), the unit of energy is the joule, named after Joule. It is a derived unit. It is equal to the energy expended (or work done) in applying a force of one newton through a distance of one metre. However energy is also expressed in many other units not part of the SI, such as ergs, calories, British thermal units, kilowatt-hours and kilocalories, which require a conversion factor when expressed in SI units.


title: Energy

text: The SI unit of energy rate (energy per unit time) is the watt, which is a joule per second. Thus, one joule is one watt-second, and 3600 joules equal one watt-hour. The CGS energy unit is the erg and the imperial and US customary unit is the foot pound. Other energy units such as the electronvolt, food calorie or thermodynamic kcal (based on the temperature change of water in a heating process), and BTU are used in specific areas of science and commerce.


title: Energy

text: In classical mechanics, energy is a conceptually and mathematically useful property, as it is a conserved quantity. Several formulations of mechanics have been developed using energy as a core concept.


title: Energy

text: This says that the work (formula_2) is equal to the line integral of the force F along a path "C"; for details see the mechanical work article. Work and thus energy is frame dependent. For example, consider a ball being hit by a bat. In the center-of-mass reference frame, the bat does no work on the ball. But, in the reference frame of the person swinging the bat, considerable work is done on the ball.


title: Energy

text: The total energy of a system is sometimes called the Hamiltonian, after William Rowan Hamilton. The classical equations of motion can be written in terms of the Hamiltonian, even for highly complex or abstract systems. These classical equations have remarkably direct analogs in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics.


title: Energy

text: Another energy-related concept is called the Lagrangian, after Joseph-Louis Lagrange. This formalism is as fundamental as the Hamiltonian, and both can be used to derive the equations of motion or be derived from them. It was invented in the context of classical mechanics, but is generally useful in modern physics. The Lagrangian is defined as the kinetic energy "minus" the potential energy. Usually, the Lagrange formalism is mathematically more convenient than the Hamiltonian for non-conservative systems (such as systems with friction).


title: Energy

text: Noether's theorem (1918) states that any differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law. Noether's theorem has become a fundamental tool of modern theoretical physics and the calculus of variations. A generalisation of the seminal formulations on constants of motion in Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics (1788 and 1833, respectively), it does not apply to systems that cannot be modeled with a Lagrangian; for example, dissipative systems with continuous symmetries need not have a corresponding conservation law.


title: Energy

text: In the context of chemistry, energy is an attribute of a substance as a consequence of its atomic, molecular, or aggregate structure. Since a chemical transformation is accompanied by a change in one or more of these kinds of structure, it is usually accompanied by a decrease, and sometimes an increase, of the total energy of the substances involved. Some energy may be transferred between the surroundings and the reactants in the form of heat or light; thus the products of a reaction have sometimes more but usually less energy than the reactants. A reaction is said to be exothermic or exergonic if the final state is lower on the energy scale than the initial state; in the less common case of endothermic reactions the situation is the reverse. Chemical reactions are usually not possible unless the reactants surmount an energy barrier known as the activation energy. The "speed" of a chemical reaction (at a given temperature "T") is related to the activation energy "E" by the Boltzmann's population factor e; that is, the probability of a molecule to have energy greater than or equal to "E" at a given temperature "T". This exponential dependence of a reaction rate on temperature is known as the Arrhenius equation. The activation energy necessary for a chemical reaction can be provided in the form of thermal energy.


title: Energy

text: In biology, energy is an attribute of all biological systems, from the biosphere to the smallest living organism. Within an organism it is responsible for growth and development of a biological cell or organelle of a biological organism. Energy used in respiration is stored in substances such as carbohydrates (including sugars), lipids, and proteins stored by cells. In human terms, the human equivalent (H-e) (Human energy conversion) indicates, for a given amount of energy expenditure, the relative quantity of energy needed for human metabolism, using as a standard an average human energy expenditure of 12,500 kJ per day and a basal metabolic rate of 80 watts. For example, if our bodies run (on average) at 80 watts, then a light bulb running at 100 watts is running at 1.25 human equivalents (100 ÷ 80) i.e. 1.25 H-e. For a difficult task of only a few seconds' duration, a person can put out thousands of watts, many times the 746 watts in one official horsepower. For tasks lasting a few minutes, a fit human can generate perhaps 1,000 watts. For an activity that must be sustained for an hour, output drops to around 300; for an activity kept up all day, 150 watts is about the maximum. The human equivalent assists understanding of energy flows in physical and biological systems by expressing energy units in human terms: it provides a "feel" for the use of a given amount of energy.


title: Energy

text: Sunlight's radiant energy is also captured by plants as "chemical potential energy" in photosynthesis, when carbon dioxide and water (two low-energy compounds) are converted into carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and oxygen. Release of the energy stored during photosynthesis as heat or light may be triggered suddenly by a spark in a forest fire, or it may be made available more slowly for animal or human metabolism when organic molecules are ingested and catabolism is triggered by enzyme action.


title: Energy

text: All living creatures rely on an external source of energy to be able to grow and reproduce – radiant energy from the Sun in the case of green plants and chemical energy (in some form) in the case of animals. The daily 1500–2000 Calories (6–8 MJ) recommended for a human adult are taken as food molecules, mostly carbohydrates and fats, of which glucose (CHO) and stearin (CHO) are convenient examples. The food molecules are oxidized to carbon dioxide and water in the mitochondria


title: Energy

text: The rest of the chemical energy of the carbohydrate or fat are converted into heat: the ATP is used as a sort of "energy currency", and some of the chemical energy it contains is used for other metabolism when ATP reacts with OH groups and eventually splits into ADP and phosphate (at each stage of a metabolic pathway, some chemical energy is converted into heat). Only a tiny fraction of the original chemical energy is used for work:


title: Energy

text: It would appear that living organisms are remarkably inefficient (in the physical sense) in their use of the energy they receive (chemical or radiant energy); most machines manage higher efficiencies. In growing organisms the energy that is converted to heat serves a vital purpose, as it allows the organism tissue to be highly ordered with regard to the molecules it is built from. The second law of thermodynamics states that energy (and matter) tends to become more evenly spread out across the universe: to concentrate energy (or matter) in one specific place, it is necessary to spread out a greater amount of energy (as heat) across the remainder of the universe ("the surroundings"). Simpler organisms can achieve higher energy efficiencies than more complex ones, but the complex organisms can occupy ecological niches that are not available to their simpler brethren. The conversion of a portion of the chemical energy to heat at each step in a metabolic pathway is the physical reason behind the pyramid of biomass observed in ecology. As an example, to take just the first step in the food chain: of the estimated 124.7 Pg/a of carbon that is fixed by photosynthesis, 64.3 Pg/a (52%) are used for the metabolism of green plants, i.e. reconverted into carbon dioxide and heat.


title: Energy

text: In geology, continental drift, mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes are phenomena that can be explained in terms of energy transformations in the Earth's interior, while meteorological phenomena like wind, rain, hail, snow, lightning, tornadoes and hurricanes are all a result of energy transformations in our atmosphere brought about by solar energy.


title: Energy

text: Sunlight is the main input to Earth's energy budget which accounts for its temperature and climate stability. Sunlight may be stored as gravitational potential energy after it strikes the Earth, as (for example when) water evaporates from oceans and is deposited upon mountains (where, after being released at a hydroelectric dam, it can be used to drive turbines or generators to produce electricity). Sunlight also drives most weather phenomena, save a few exceptions, like those generated by volcanic events for example. An example of a solar-mediated weather event is a hurricane, which occurs when large unstable areas of warm ocean, heated over months, suddenly give up some of their thermal energy to power a few days of violent air movement.


title: Energy

text: In a slower process, radioactive decay of atoms in the core of the Earth releases heat. This thermal energy drives plate tectonics and may lift mountains, via orogenesis. This slow lifting represents a kind of gravitational potential energy storage of the thermal energy, which may later be transformed into active kinetic energy during landslides, after a triggering event. Earthquakes also release stored elastic potential energy in rocks, a store that has been produced ultimately from the same radioactive heat sources. Thus, according to present understanding, familiar events such as landslides and earthquakes release energy that has been stored as potential energy in the Earth's gravitational field or elastic strain (mechanical potential energy) in rocks. Prior to this, they represent release of energy that has been stored in heavy atoms since the collapse of long-destroyed supernova stars (which created these atoms).


title: Energy

text: In cosmology and astronomy the phenomena of stars, nova, supernova, quasars and gamma-ray bursts are the universe's highest-output energy transformations of matter. All stellar phenomena (including solar activity) are driven by various kinds of energy transformations. Energy in such transformations is either from gravitational collapse of matter (usually molecular hydrogen) into various classes of astronomical objects (stars, black holes, etc.), or from nuclear fusion (of lighter elements, primarily hydrogen). The nuclear fusion of hydrogen in the Sun also releases another store of potential energy which was created at the time of the Big Bang. At that time, according to theory, space expanded and the universe cooled too rapidly for hydrogen to completely fuse into heavier elements. This meant that hydrogen represents a store of potential energy that can be released by fusion. Such a fusion process is triggered by heat and pressure generated from gravitational collapse of hydrogen clouds when they produce stars, and some of the fusion energy is then transformed into sunlight.


title: Energy

text: (Hamiltonian) as a time derivative of the wave function. The Schrödinger equation equates the energy operator to the full energy of a particle or a system. Its results can be considered as a definition of measurement of energy in quantum mechanics. The Schrödinger equation describes the space- and time-dependence of a slowly changing (non-relativistic) wave function of quantum systems. The solution of this equation for a bound system is discrete (a set of permitted states, each characterized by an energy level) which results in the concept of quanta. In the solution of the Schrödinger equation for any oscillator (vibrator) and for electromagnetic waves in a vacuum, the resulting energy states are related to the frequency by Planck's relation: formula_3 (where formula_4 is the Planck constant and formula_5 the frequency). In the case of an electromagnetic wave these energy states are called quanta of light or photons.


title: Energy

text: When calculating kinetic energy (work to accelerate a massive body from zero speed to some finite speed) relativistically – using Lorentz transformations instead of Newtonian mechanics – Einstein discovered an unexpected by-product of these calculations to be an energy term which does not vanish at zero speed. He called it rest energy: energy which every massive body must possess even when being at rest. The amount of energy is directly proportional to the mass of the body:


title: Energy

text: For example, consider electron–positron annihilation, in which the rest energy of these two individual particles (equivalent to their rest mass) is converted to the radiant energy of the photons produced in the process. In this system the matter and antimatter (electrons and positrons) are destroyed and changed to non-matter (the photons). However, the total mass and total energy do not change during this interaction. The photons each have no rest mass but nonetheless have radiant energy which exhibits the same inertia as did the two original particles. This is a reversible process – the inverse process is called pair creation – in which the rest mass of particles is created from the radiant energy of two (or more) annihilating photons.


title: Energy

text: In general relativity, the stress–energy tensor serves as the source term for the gravitational field, in rough analogy to the way mass serves as the source term in the non-relativistic Newtonian approximation.


title: Energy

text: Energy and mass are manifestations of one and the same underlying physical property of a system. This property is responsible for the inertia and strength of gravitational interaction of the system ("mass manifestations"), and is also responsible for the potential ability of the system to perform work or heating ("energy manifestations"), subject to the limitations of other physical laws.


title: Energy

text: In classical physics, energy is a scalar quantity, the canonical conjugate to time. In special relativity energy is also a scalar (although not a Lorentz scalar but a time component of the energy–momentum 4-vector). In other words, energy is invariant with respect to rotations of space, but not invariant with respect to rotations of spacetime (= boosts).


title: Energy

text: Energy may be transformed between different forms at various efficiencies. Items that transform between these forms are called transducers. Examples of transducers include a battery (from chemical energy to electric energy), a dam (from gravitational potential energy to kinetic energy of moving water (and the blades of a turbine) and ultimately to electric energy through an electric generator), and a heat engine (from heat to work).


title: Energy

text: Examples of energy transformation include generating electric energy from heat energy via a steam turbine, or lifting an object against gravity using electrical energy driving a crane motor. Lifting against gravity performs mechanical work on the object and stores gravitational potential energy in the object. If the object falls to the ground, gravity does mechanical work on the object which transforms the potential energy in the gravitational field to the kinetic energy released as heat on impact with the ground. Our Sun transforms nuclear potential energy to other forms of energy; its total mass does not decrease due to that itself (since it still contains the same total energy even in different forms) but its mass does decrease when the energy escapes out to its surroundings, largely as radiant energy.


title: Energy

text: There are strict limits to how efficiently heat can be converted into work in a cyclic process, e.g. in a heat engine, as described by Carnot's theorem and the second law of thermodynamics. However, some energy transformations can be quite efficient. The direction of transformations in energy (what kind of energy is transformed to what other kind) is often determined by entropy (equal energy spread among all available degrees of freedom) considerations. In practice all energy transformations are permitted on a small scale, but certain larger transformations are not permitted because it is statistically unlikely that energy or matter will randomly move into more concentrated forms or smaller spaces.


title: Energy

text: Energy transformations in the universe over time are characterized by various kinds of potential energy, that has been available since the Big Bang, being "released" (transformed to more active types of energy such as kinetic or radiant energy) when a triggering mechanism is available. Familiar examples of such processes include nucleosynthesis, a process ultimately using the gravitational potential energy released from the gravitational collapse of supernovae to "store" energy in the creation of heavy isotopes (such as uranium and thorium), and nuclear decay, a process in which energy is released that was originally stored in these heavy elements, before they were incorporated into the solar system and the Earth. This energy is triggered and released in nuclear fission bombs or in civil nuclear power generation. Similarly, in the case of a chemical explosion, chemical potential energy is transformed to kinetic and thermal energy in a very short time.


title: Energy

text: Yet another example is that of a pendulum. At its highest points the kinetic energy is zero and the gravitational potential energy is at its maximum. At its lowest point the kinetic energy is at its maximum and is equal to the decrease in potential energy. If one (unrealistically) assumes that there is no friction or other losses, the conversion of energy between these processes would be perfect, and the pendulum would continue swinging forever.


title: Energy

text: Energy is also transferred from potential energy (formula_8) to kinetic energy (formula_9) and then back to potential energy constantly. This is referred to as conservation of energy. In this isolated system, energy cannot be created or destroyed; therefore, the initial energy and the final energy will be equal to each other. This can be demonstrated by the following:


title: Energy

text: The equation can then be simplified further since formula_10 (mass times acceleration due to gravity times the height) and formula_11 (half mass times velocity squared). Then the total amount of energy can be found by adding formula_12.


title: Energy

text: Energy gives rise to weight when it is trapped in a system with zero momentum, where it can be weighed. It is also equivalent to mass, and this mass is always associated with it. Mass is also equivalent to a certain amount of energy, and likewise always appears associated with it, as described in mass-energy equivalence. The formula "E" = "mc"², derived by Albert Einstein (1905) quantifies the relationship between relativistic mass and energy within the concept of special relativity. In different theoretical frameworks, similar formulas were derived by J.J. Thomson (1881), Henri Poincaré (1900), Friedrich Hasenöhrl (1904) and others (see Mass-energy equivalence#History for further information).


title: Energy

text: Part of the rest energy (equivalent to rest mass) of matter may be converted to other forms of energy (still exhibiting mass), but neither energy nor mass can be destroyed; rather, both remain constant during any process. However, since formula_13 is extremely large relative to ordinary human scales, the conversion of an everyday amount of rest mass (for example, 1 kg) from rest energy to other forms of energy (such as kinetic energy, thermal energy, or the radiant energy carried by light and other radiation) can liberate tremendous amounts of energy (~formula_14 joules = 21 megatons of TNT), as can be seen in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Conversely, the mass equivalent of an everyday amount energy is minuscule, which is why a loss of energy (loss of mass) from most systems is difficult to measure on a weighing scale, unless the energy loss is very large. Examples of large transformations between rest energy (of matter) and other forms of energy (e.g., kinetic energy into particles with rest mass) are found in nuclear physics and particle physics. Often, however, the complete conversion of matter (such as atoms) to non-matter (such as photons) is forbidden by conservation laws.


title: Energy

text: Thermodynamics divides energy transformation into two kinds: reversible processes and irreversible processes. An irreversible process is one in which energy is dissipated (spread) into empty energy states available in a volume, from which it cannot be recovered into more concentrated forms (fewer quantum states), without degradation of even more energy. A reversible process is one in which this sort of dissipation does not happen. For example, conversion of energy from one type of potential field to another is reversible, as in the pendulum system described above. In processes where heat is generated, quantum states of lower energy, present as possible excitations in fields between atoms, act as a reservoir for part of the energy, from which it cannot be recovered, in order to be converted with 100% efficiency into other forms of energy. In this case, the energy must partly stay as thermal energy and cannot be completely recovered as usable energy, except at the price of an increase in some other kind of heat-like increase in disorder in quantum states, in the universe (such as an expansion of matter, or a randomization in a crystal).


title: Energy

text: As the universe evolves with time, more and more of its energy becomes trapped in irreversible states (i.e., as heat or as other kinds of increases in disorder). This has led to the hypothesis of the inevitable thermodynamic heat death of the universe. In this heat death the energy of the universe does not change, but the fraction of energy which is available to do work through a heat engine, or be transformed to other usable forms of energy (through the use of generators attached to heat engines), continues to decrease.


title: Energy

text: The fact that energy can be neither created nor destroyed is called the law of conservation of energy. In the form of the first law of thermodynamics, this states that a closed system's energy is constant unless energy is transferred in or out as work or heat, and that no energy is lost in transfer. The total inflow of energy into a system must equal the total outflow of energy from the system, plus the change in the energy contained within the system. Whenever one measures (or calculates) the total energy of a system of particles whose interactions do not depend explicitly on time, it is found that the total energy of the system always remains constant.


title: Energy

text: While heat can always be fully converted into work in a reversible isothermal expansion of an ideal gas, for cyclic processes of practical interest in heat engines the second law of thermodynamics states that the system doing work always loses some energy as waste heat. This creates a limit to the amount of heat energy that can do work in a cyclic process, a limit called the available energy. Mechanical and other forms of energy can be transformed in the other direction into thermal energy without such limitations. The total energy of a system can be calculated by adding up all forms of energy in the system.


title: Energy

text: Most kinds of energy (with gravitational energy being a notable exception) are subject to strict local conservation laws as well. In this case, energy can only be exchanged between adjacent regions of space, and all observers agree as to the volumetric density of energy in any given space. There is also a global law of conservation of energy, stating that the total energy of the universe cannot change; this is a corollary of the local law, but not vice versa.


title: Energy

text: This law is a fundamental principle of physics. As shown rigorously by Noether's theorem, the conservation of energy is a mathematical consequence of translational symmetry of time, a property of most phenomena below the cosmic scale that makes them independent of their locations on the time coordinate. Put differently, yesterday, today, and tomorrow are physically indistinguishable. This is because energy is the quantity which is canonical conjugate to time. This mathematical entanglement of energy and time also results in the uncertainty principle – it is impossible to define the exact amount of energy during any definite time interval (though this is practically significant only for very short time intervals). The uncertainty principle should not be confused with energy conservation – rather it provides mathematical limits to which energy can in principle be defined and measured.


title: Energy

text: Each of the basic forces of nature is associated with a different type of potential energy, and all types of potential energy (like all other types of energy) appear as system mass, whenever present. For example, a compressed spring will be slightly more massive than before it was compressed. Likewise, whenever energy is transferred between systems by any mechanism, an associated mass is transferred with it.


title: Energy

text: In quantum mechanics energy is expressed using the Hamiltonian operator. On any time scales, the uncertainty in the energy is by


title: Energy

text: which is similar in form to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (but not really mathematically equivalent thereto, since "H" and "t" are not dynamically conjugate variables, neither in classical nor in quantum mechanics).


title: Energy

text: In particle physics, this inequality permits a qualitative understanding of virtual particles, which carry momentum. The exchange of virtual particles with real particles is responsible for the creation of all known fundamental forces (more accurately known as fundamental interactions). Virtual photons are also responsible for the electrostatic interaction between electric charges (which results in Coulomb's law), for spontaneous radiative decay of excited atomic and nuclear states, for the Casimir force, for the Van der Waals force and some other observable phenomena.


title: Energy

text: Energy transfer can be considered for the special case of systems which are closed to transfers of matter. The portion of the energy which is transferred by conservative forces over a distance is measured as the work the source system does on the receiving system. The portion of the energy which does not do work during the transfer is called heat. Energy can be transferred between systems in a variety of ways. Examples include the transmission of electromagnetic energy via photons, physical collisions which transfer kinetic energy, tidal interactions, and the conductive transfer of thermal energy.


title: Energy

text: Energy is strictly conserved and is also locally conserved wherever it can be defined. In thermodynamics, for closed systems, the process of energy transfer is described by the first law:


title: Energy

text: where formula_16 is the amount of energy transferred, formula_2  represents the work done on or by the system, and formula_18 represents the heat flow into or out of the system. As a simplification, the heat term, formula_18, can sometimes be ignored, especially for fast processes involving gases, which are poor conductors of heat, or when the thermal efficiency of the transfer is high. For such adiabatic processes,


title: Energy

text: Beyond the constraints of closed systems, open systems can gain or lose energy in association with matter transfer (this process is illustrated by injection of an air-fuel mixture into a car engine, a system which gains in energy thereby, without addition of either work or heat). Denoting this energy by formula_20, one may write


title: Energy

text: Internal energy is the sum of all microscopic forms of energy of a system. It is the energy needed to create the system. It is related to the potential energy, e.g., molecular structure, crystal structure, and other geometric aspects, as well as the motion of the particles, in form of kinetic energy. Thermodynamics is chiefly concerned with changes in internal energy and not its absolute value, which is impossible to determine with thermodynamics alone.


title: Energy

text: The first law of thermodynamics asserts that the total energy of a system and its surroundings (but not necessarily thermodynamic free energy) is always conserved and that heat flow is a form of energy transfer. For homogeneous systems, with a well-defined temperature and pressure, a commonly used corollary of the first law is that, for a system subject only to pressure forces and heat transfer (e.g., a cylinder-full of gas) without chemical changes, the differential change in the internal energy of the system (with a "gain" in energy signified by a positive quantity) is given as


title: Energy

text: where the first term on the right is the heat transferred into the system, expressed in terms of temperature "T" and entropy "S" (in which entropy increases and its change d"S" is positive when heat is added to the system), and the last term on the right hand side is identified as work done on the system, where pressure is "P" and volume "V" (the negative sign results since compression of the system requires work to be done on it and so the volume change, d"V", is negative when work is done on the system).


title: Energy

text: This equation is highly specific, ignoring all chemical, electrical, nuclear, and gravitational forces, effects such as advection of any form of energy other than heat and "PV"-work. The general formulation of the first law (i.e., conservation of energy) is valid even in situations in which the system is not homogeneous. For these cases the change in internal energy of a "closed" system is expressed in a general form by


title: Energy

text: where formula_23 is the heat supplied to the system and formula_24 is the work applied to the system.


title: Energy

text: The energy of a mechanical harmonic oscillator (a mass on a spring) is alternately kinetic and potential energy. At two points in the oscillation cycle it is entirely kinetic, and at two points it is entirely potential. Over a whole cycle, or over many cycles, average energy is equally split between kinetic and potential. This is an example of the equipartition principle: the total energy of a system with many degrees of freedom is equally split among all available degrees of freedom, on average.


title: Energy

text: This principle is vitally important to understanding the behavior of a quantity closely related to energy, called entropy. Entropy is a measure of evenness of a distribution of energy between parts of a system. When an isolated system is given more degrees of freedom (i.e., given new available energy states that are the same as existing states), then total energy spreads over all available degrees equally without distinction between "new" and "old" degrees. This mathematical result is part of the second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics is simple only for systems which are near or in a physical equilibrium state. For non-equilibrium systems, the laws governing the systems' behavior are still debatable. One of the guiding principles for these systems is the principle of maximum entropy production. It states that nonequilibrium systems behave in such a way as to maximize their entropy production.


title: Carl Weathers

text: Carl Weathers (born January 14, 1948) is an American actor and former professional football player. He is known for his roles as boxer Apollo Creed in the first four "Rocky" films (1976–85), George Dillon in "Predator" (1987), Action Jackson in "Action Jackson" (1988), and Chubbs Peterson in "Happy Gilmore" (1996) and in "Little Nicky" (2000), and Combat Carl in the "Toy Story" franchise. He also portrayed Det. Beaudreaux in the television series "Street Justice" (1991–93) and a fictionalized version of himself in the comedy series "Arrested Development" (2003–19), and voiced Omnitraxus Prime in "Star vs. the Forces of Evil" (2017–19). He has a recurring role as Greef Karga in the "Star Wars" series "The Mandalorian" (2019–).


title: Carl Weathers

text: Weathers played college football at San Diego State University. After going undrafted in the 1970 NFL Draft, he signed with the Oakland Raiders. He would sign with the B.C. Lions of the Canadian Football League after being released by the Raiders.


title: Carl Weathers

text: Weathers was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father was a day laborer. As an eighth-grade student, he earned an athletic scholarship to St. Augustine High School, a private school. He was an all-around athlete, involved in boxing, football, gymnastics, judo, soccer, and wrestling. He graduated in 1966.


title: Carl Weathers

text: Weathers played football as a defensive end in college. He started his college career in 1966 at Long Beach City College, where he did not play in 1966 due to an ankle injury suffered when he tripped over a curb surrounding the running track while warming up for practice with another linebacker, Paul Snow. He then transferred and played for San Diego State University, becoming a letterman for the San Diego State Aztecs in 1968 and 1969, helping the Aztecs win the 1969 Pasadena Bowl, finishing with an 11–0 record, and a No. 18 ranking in the Final UPI Poll, playing for head coach Don Coryell.


title: Carl Weathers

text: After he went undrafted, Weathers signed with the Oakland Raiders as a free agent in 1970. Now playing as a linebacker, Weathers played in seven games for the Raiders in 1970, helping them win the AFC West Division title, on their way to the first-ever AFC Championship Game. Weathers only played in one game in 1971, before the Raiders released him.


title: Carl Weathers

text: He then signed with the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League in 1971 and played until 1973, playing 18 games in total. During the off-seasons, Weathers attended San Francisco State University and earned a bachelor's degree in drama in 1974.


title: Carl Weathers

text: He retired from football in 1974, and began pursuing an acting career. In his NFL career he appeared in 8 games in two seasons, but didn't record any stats. The only stat he recorded in his CFL career was a single fumble recovery.


title: Carl Weathers

text: Weathers narrated NFL Films' season recap of the 1999, 2000 and 2001 seasons. During the 2017 NFL Draft, he appeared on NFL Network's pre-draft coverage.


title: Carl Weathers

text: Weathers began working as an extra while still playing football. He had his first significant roles in two blaxploitation films directed by his longtime friend Arthur Marks: "Bucktown" (1975) and "Friday Foster" (1975). Weathers also appeared in an early 1975 episode of the sitcom "Good Times" titled "The Nude", portraying an angry husband who suspected his wife of cheating on him with J.J. He also guest-starred in a 1975 episode of "Kung Fu" titled "The Brothers Caine", and in an episode of "Cannon" titled "The Hero". In 1976, he appeared as a loan shark in an episode of the crime-drama "Starsky and Hutch", and in the "Barnaby Jones" episode "The Bounty Hunter" as escaped convict Jack Hopper.


title: Carl Weathers

text: While auditioning for the role of Apollo Creed alongside Sylvester Stallone in "Rocky," Weathers criticized Stallone's acting, which led to him getting the role. He reprised the role of Apollo Creed in the next three "Rocky" films: "Rocky II" (1979), "Rocky III" (1982), and "Rocky IV" (1985).


title: Carl Weathers

text: Weathers is briefly seen as an Army MP in one of the three released versions of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (originally released in 1977). In 1978, Weathers portrayed Vince Sullivan in a TV movie, "Not This Time". In the late 1970s and 1980s, Weathers starred in a number of action films for the small and big screen, including "Force 10 from Navarone" (1978), "Predator" (1987), "Action Jackson" (1988), and "Hurricane Smith" (1992). As a member of the cast of "Predator", Weathers worked with future California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and future Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura. Many years later he appeared in a spoof segment on "Saturday Night Live," announcing that he was running for political office and urging viewers to vote for him on the basis that "he was the black guy in "Predator".


title: Carl Weathers

text: He also appeared in Michael Jackson's "Liberian Girl" music video and co-starred in the Adam Sandler comedy "Happy Gilmore", as Chubbs, a golf legend teaching Happy how to play golf. He reprised the role nearly four years later in the Sandler comedy "Little Nicky".


title: Carl Weathers

text: Another notable TV role was Sgt. Adam Beaudreaux on the cop show "Street Justice." Afterwards, during the final two seasons of "In the Heat of the Night", from 1992-1994, his character, Hampton Forbes, replaced Bill Gillespie as the chief of police. He also played as MACV-SOG Colonel Brewster in the CBS series "Tour of Duty."


title: Carl Weathers

text: In 2004, Weathers received a career revival as a comedic actor beginning with appearances in three episodes of the comedy series "Arrested Development" as a cheapskate caricature of himself, who serves as Tobias Fünke's acting coach. He was then cast in the comedies "The Sasquatch Gang" and "The Comebacks." Weathers had a guest role in two episodes of "The Shield" as the former training officer of main character Vic Mackey.


title: Carl Weathers

text: Weathers provided the voice for Colonel Samuel Garrett in the Pandemic Studios video game "." In 2005, he was a narrator on "Conquest! The Price Of Victory - Witness The Journey of the Trojans!," an 18-part television show about USC athletics. Weathers is a principal of Red Tight Media, a film and video production company that specializes in tactical training films made for the United States armed forces. He also appeared in one episode of "ER" as the father of an injured boxer during their 2008 finale season.


title: Carl Weathers

text: For the sixth film in the "Rocky" series, "Rocky Balboa" (2006), Stallone asked Weathers, Mr. T, and Dolph Lundgren for permission to use footage from their appearances in the earlier "Rocky" films. Mr. T and Lundgren agreed, but Weathers wanted an actual part in the movie, even though his character had died in "Rocky IV". Stallone refused, and Weathers decided not to allow Stallone to use his image for flashbacks from the previous films. They instead used footage of a fighter who looks similar to Weathers. Weathers and Stallone patched up their differences and Weathers agreed to allow footage of him from previous films to be used throughout "Creed".


title: Carl Weathers

text: Weathers portrayed the father of Michael Strahan and Daryl "Chill" Mitchell's characters on the short-lived 2009 Fox sitcom "Brothers". Weathers acted as Brian "Gebo" Fitzgerald in advertising for Old Spice's sponsorship of NASCAR driver Tony Stewart. He also appears in an ongoing series of web-only advertisements for Credit Union of Washington, dispensing flowers and the advice that "change is beautiful" to puzzled-looking bystanders. He is also starring in a series of commercials for Bud Light, in which he introduces plays from the "Bud Light Playbook." At the conclusion of each commercial, Weathers can be seen bursting through the Bud Light Playbook and shouting "Here we go!"


title: Carl Weathers

text: In 2019, Weathers appeared as Greef Karga in several episodes of the first season of the Star Wars series, "The Mandalorian". He returned for the second season and also directed the episode "". His performance earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor.


title: M109 howitzer

text: The M109 is an American 155 mm turreted self-propelled howitzer, first introduced in the early 1960s to replace the M44. It has been upgraded a number of times, most recently to the M109A7. The M109 family is the most common Western indirect-fire support weapon of maneuver brigades of armored and mechanized infantry divisions.


title: M109 howitzer

text: The M109 has a crew of four: the section chief/commander, the driver, the gunner, and the ammunition handler/loader. The chief or gunner aims the cannon left or right (deflection) and up and down (quadrant).


title: M109 howitzer

text: The British Army replaced its M109s with the AS-90. Several European armed forces have or are currently replacing older M109s with the German PzH 2000. Upgrades to the M109 were introduced by the U.S. (see variants) and by Switzerland (KAWEST). With the cancellation of the U.S. Crusader and Non-Line-of-Sight Cannon, the M109A6 ("Paladin") will likely remain the principal self-propelled howitzer for the U.S. until the new M1299 enters service.


title: M109 howitzer

text: The M109 was the medium variant of a U.S. program to adopt a common chassis for its self-propelled artillery units. The light version, the M108 Howitzer, was phased out during the Vietnam War, but many were rebuilt as M109s.


title: M109 howitzer

text: The M109 saw its combat debut in Vietnam. Around 200 vehicles were deployed in 1966, but the entire fleet suffered a mechanical malfunction within a year of operation. The U.S. dispatched engineers and mechanics, but all M109s were recalled back to the U.S. in 1967 after failing to repair on the field. The howitzer underwent upgrades afterward, which resulted M109A1 variant that went into production in 1970.


title: M109 howitzer

text: Israel used the M109 against Egypt in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and in the 1982 and 2006 Lebanon Wars. Iran used the M109 in the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s. The M109 saw service with the British, Egyptian and Saudi Arabian Armies in the 1991 Gulf War. The M109 also saw service with the U.S. Army in the Gulf War, as well as in the Iraq War from 2003 to 2011.


title: M109 howitzer

text: Upgrades to the cannon, ammunition, fire control, survivability, and other electronics systems over the design's lifespan have expanded the system's capabilities, including tactical nuclear projectiles, guided projectiles (Copperhead), Rocket Assisted Projectiles (RAP), FAmily of SCAtterable Mines (FASCAM), and cluster munitions (the Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition, DPICM).


title: M109 howitzer

text: In August 2015, South Korean K55A1s fired rounds behind the Military Demarcation Line as a warning after several provocations.


title: M109 howitzer

text: During 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine used M109 howitzers which were donated by Western countries.


title: M109 howitzer

text: The M109 was developed by the Ground System Division of United Defense LP (now BAE Systems Land and Armaments).


title: M109 howitzer

text: In January 2016, the U.S. Army test-fired hypervelocity projectiles originally designed for use by U.S. Navy electromagnetic railguns and found that they significantly increased the gun's range. The Army is looking into using the M109 Paladin firing the HVP for ballistic missile defense, as traditional missile interceptors are expensive and gun-based missile defense used for point defense would use artillery at a much lower cost per round. The HVP is capable of being fired out to from a conventional cannon. It weighs with a flight body containing its guidance and warhead—less powerful, but more agile to hit small, high-speed targets. Modifications will be needed for the Paladin to effectively shoot the HVP, possibly including different propellant to achieve higher velocities, automated reloading systems to fire quickly enough to defeat salvo launches, improved barrel life, and a new fire control and sensor system. During a test of the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) on 3 September 2020, an HVP fired from an Army Paladin howitzer successfully intercepted a BQM-167 target drone simulating a cruise missile.


title: M109 howitzer

text: First produced in 1963. It had a 23 caliber 155 mm M126 Cannon in an M127 Mount, and carried 28 rounds of 155 mm ammunition. It was also armed with a .50cal M2HB machine gun with 500 rounds of ammunition. Easily identified by its short barrel and a double baffle muzzle brake with a large fume extractor just behind it. Maximum range of 14,600 meters.


title: M109 howitzer

text: Replaced the M126 Cannon with a 39 caliber M185 Cannon, featuring a longer barrel while increasing maximum range to 18,100 meters.


title: M109 howitzer

text: Incorporated 27 Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (RAM) mid-life improvements. Most notably, the long barreled 155 mm M185 Cannon in the new M178 gun mount, ballistic protection for the panoramic telescope, counterbalanced travel lock, and the ability to mount the M140 bore sight alignment device. Stowage of 155mm rounds increased from 28 to 36 rounds; .50cal ammunition remained at 500 rounds. During M109A2 production, a slightly simplified version was also produced for export. This had minor internal changes and deleted the hull flotation feature. These were designated M109A1B.


title: M109 howitzer

text: M109A1s and M109A1Bs rebuilt to M109A2 standard respectively. Some A3s feature three contact arm assemblies, while all A2s have five.


title: M109 howitzer

text: M109A2s and M109A3s improved with Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical / Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (NBC/RAM) improvements, including air purifiers, heaters, and Mission Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) (protective) gear.


title: M109 howitzer

text: The traversing mechanism's clutch was hydraulic, as compared to the electric mechanism on previous M109s, and featured a manual override. The M109A4 also gained a second hydraulic filter. Also included is an improvement to the engine starting equipment, greatly improving the ability to start in an emergency.


title: M109 howitzer

text: Replaces the 155 mm M185 Cannon in an M178 Mount with a 39-caliber 155 mm M284 Cannon in an M182 Mount, giving the A5 a maximum range of 22,000 meters with unassisted projectiles and 30,000 meters with Rocket Assisted Projectile (RAP) rounds. The vehicle can carry 36 complete rounds of ammunition and has a 440 hp engine instead of the standard 405 hp engine.


title: M109 howitzer

text: Various manufacturers have upgraded the fire control and other components of the M109A5. BAE Systems in York PA recently delivered 12 M109A5+ vehicles to Chile and 40 M109A5+ vehicles for Brazil.


title: M109 howitzer

text: Overall product improvement in the areas of survivability, RAM, and armament. This includes increased armor, a redesigned internal arrangement for safer ammunition and equipment storage, engine and suspension upgrades, and product improvement of the M284 Cannon and M182A1 Mount. The greatest difference is the integration of an inertial navigation system, sensors detecting the weapons' lay, automation, and an encrypted digital communication system, which utilizes computer controlled frequency hopping to avoid enemy electronic warfare and allow the howitzer to send grid location and altitude to the battery Fire Direction Center (FDC) . The battery FDCs in turn coordinate fires through a battalion or higher FDC. This allows the Paladin to halt from the move and fire within 30 seconds with an accuracy equivalent to the previous models when properly emplaced, laid, and safed—a process that required several minutes under the best of circumstances. Tactically, this improves the system's survivability by allowing the battery to operate dispersed by pairs across the countryside and allowing the howitzer to quickly displace between salvos, or if attacked by indirect fire, aircraft, or ground forces.


title: M109 howitzer

text: This Swiss improved version produced by Ruag incorporates a new Swiss-designed L47 155 mm gun with an increased firing range of up to 36 km. It features inertial navigation system coupled with a new gun-laying system and more ammunition storage (40 rounds, 64 charges). The KAWEST (lit. "Kampfwertsteigerung" = upgrade of combat capabilities) requires only six crew members instead of eight, and is able to fire three-round bursts within 15 seconds or maintain a constant firing rate of over one round per minute.


title: M109 howitzer

text: Upgraded Swiss PzHb (Panzerhaubitze) 79 and 88 (M109A1) are known as respectively PzHb 79/95 and PzHb 88/95.


title: M109 howitzer

text: Jointly developed by the Dutch firm RDM and the German firm Rheinmetall, the M109L52 was first revealed in 2002. The main improvement was replacing the M126 series gun with the longer 52-caliber cannon from the PzH 2000, thus the MTLS ammunition of the PzH 2000 can be used. In addition, improvements to the loading system were made. This resulted in an increase of the rate of fire to 9–10 rds/min from the original 3 rds/min, and this high rate of fire can be sustained for up to 2 minutes. A total of 35 rounds can be carried.


title: M109 howitzer

text: The latest version in service with the Norwegian Army's Artilleribataljonen. 126 M109Gs were acquired from West Germany between 1969 and 1971. They were then upgraded to the M109A3GN configuration during the latter half of the 1980s. In 2006, there were still 56 M109A3GNs in the Army's inventory, meaning that at least 70 SPGs had been scrapped after the end of the Cold War. 14 of the M109A3GNs received additional upgrades in 2007, and were designated M109A3GNM. The upgrade includes, among other things, new intercom and new navigation and positioning systems. In 2020, both the 14 units with "A3GNM" upgrades and the rest of the units still having "A3GN" specs were put in storage, as all of the new Korean K9 Thunder units had been delivered. In May 2022, Norway donated 22 "A3GN" to Ukraine. Two M109A3GN howitzers were destroyed and three damaged during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: M109 howitzer

text: K55 is a South Korean license produced variant of the M109A2. In the 1960s, the South Korean Army received M107 and M110 from the United States. However, the number of these self-propelled guns was insufficient to counter rapidly-growing North Korean artillery capabilities. In the 1970s, South Korea began mass-producing towed howitzers locally, but intelligence reports of North Korean 170 mm self-propelled artillery forced South Korea to look for a new self-propelled artillery system.


title: M109 howitzer

text: In December 1983, the ministers of defense of the United States and South Korea signed a MOU to co-produce M109A2 in South Korea using American technical data. The United States delivered two completed M109A2s to South Korea for operational review, and the Agency for Defense Development began to translate the data package and created field and maintenance manuals for soldiers. South Korea wanted to produce every parts of the vehicle domestically; however, due to the amendment bill by Rep. Samuel S. Stratton of New York, which set the limit in foreign military technology cooperation, the turret and the M185 cannon from Watervliet Arsenal were imported from the United States.


title: M109 howitzer

text: Compared to the M109A2, besides 63 percent of parts being produced locally, K55 has a driver's night periscope and light exposure minimization device to enhance night-time operations as well as additional radio systems. The vehicle also has NBC protection system, and halon fire extinguishers. A total of 1,180 K55s were produced between 1985 to 1996. The vehicle's name was changed from KM109A2 to K55, which was originally a code name from the Samsung factory.


title: M109 howitzer

text: On 13 November 1990, the United States and South Korea signed an agreement to allow South Korea to supply M109 parts to third parties. On 28 May 1997, during the Security Cooperation Committee held in Washington D.C., South Korea requested the United States to revise the MOU for the exporting whole K55, which are intended for domestic use only. South Korea was expecting to export 72 K55s and four ammunition support vehicles to Brazil for $160 million over Belgium's offer, but the United States Department of Defense declined the request to avoid an arms race in the region.


title: M109 howitzer

text: On 29 May 1998, South Korean military began fielding K55 simulator to boost artillerymen training. The simulator took a year and a billion KRW budget for development, and is expected to save 150 million KRW per year per device.


title: M109 howitzer

text: The K55A1 is a South Korean overhaul and modernization of the K55 by augmenting the proven systems of the K9 Thunder and the K9 upgrade plan. The development took three years between 2007 to 2010, and the upgrade started in 2010. On 30 November 2010, in the wake of the North Korean artillery attack, the South Korean government authorized massive increase of military spending; South Korea allocated 11.5 billion KRW on K55A1 upgrade for FY2011, more than a 1500% increase from 700 million KRW for FY2010. The upgrade is performed by Samsung Techwin, and the first vehicle was fielded by the South Korean Army in early 2011.


title: M109 howitzer

text: The K55A1 is fitted with the same electronics and fire control system as the K9. The self-propelled gun has significantly enhanced field operability and accuracy by the installation of Honeywell Aerospace's TALIN 5000 INS (inertial navigation system), satellite navigation device (GPS), and speed calibrator. As a result, the vehicle automatically lays the gun in the desired direction and delivers a first round within 45 seconds when stationary or 75 seconds during on move after receiving the shooting specification, which required 2 minutes and 11 minutes, respectively, on the K55. With the help of a new semi-autoloader, while charges are still inserted manually, the howitzer can fire 4 rounds per minute, increasing from 2 to 3 rounds per minute. The improved suspension by adding strut-type hydropneumatic buffer from Mottrol Co, Ltd. and enhanced chamber allow the vehicle to shoot without laying spades at a maximum distance of 32 km using base bleed ammunition. The APU (auxiliary power unit) is also installed to operate the howitzer without turning on the main engine.


title: M109 howitzer

text: The Army Consolidated Maintenance Depot also joined K55A1 upgrade, and released its first results on 20 December 2013. The upgrade costs 20% of the K9 Thunder (800 million KRW) as of 2021.


title: M109 howitzer

text: The newest M109 version for U.S. service is the M109A7, formerly known as the M109A6 Paladin Integrated Management (PIM). The M109A7 shares common chassis components with the Bradley Fighting Vehicle (BFV) such as the engine, transmission, and tracks. This creates commonality with other systems and maximizes cost-savings in production, parts inventory, and maintenance personnel. The M109A7's onboard power systems harness technologies originally developed for the Non-Line-of-Sight Cannon; the electric drive is faster than the previous hydraulic system, and the automatic rammer more consistently rams the round into the gun for consistent velocities and better accuracy. It features a 600-volt onboard power system to accommodate additional armor and future networking technologies as they become ready. The M109A7 can sustain a one-round per-minute rate of fire and a maximum rate of fire of four rounds per-minute. Weighing , the M109A7 is heavier than its predecessor, and it has the capacity to grow to . Even with the weight increase, the M109A7 can travel faster than previous versions at and is more maneuverable than a BFV.