The quantity of energy transferred is the vector dot product of the force and the displacement of the object. As forces are applied to the system they are distributed internally to its component parts. While some of the energy transferred can end up stored as the kinetic energy of acquired velocity, the deformation of component objects results in stored elastic energy.

A prototypical elastic component is a coiled spring. The linear elastic performance of a spring is parametrized by a constant of proportionality,