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rc75
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In section 4 of Landau and Lifgarbagez they derive the expression for the kinetic energy by expanding the Lagrangian around v+e. The resulting expression has a term which must be a total time derivative so that the equations of motion are unaffected. The text claims that the term dL/d(v^2) v.e must be linear in v to be a total time derivative, but I don't understand why this is.