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The home of textEnergy project to students
Energy
In general, the word
energy
refers to aconcept that can be paraphrased as "the potential for causing
changes", and therefore energy is the cause of any change. The word is used in several different contexts.The use of the word in mainstream science has a precise, well-defined meaning, which is not the case, mostoften, with many other usages.The most common definition of energy iswork that a certain force (gravitational, electromagnetic, etc) cando. It is the ability to do work. Due to a variety of forces, energy has many different forms (gravitational,electric, heat, etc.) that can be grouped into two major categories:kinetic energy and potential energy.
According to this definition, energy has the same units as work; a forceapplied through a distance. TheSI
unit of energy, the joule, equals onenewtonapplied through one meter , for example. Energy has no
direction in space, and is therefore considered a scalar quantity.
Energy is aconservedquantity, meaning that it cannot be created or destroyed, but only converted from oneform into another. Thus, the total energy of the universe always remains constant.
Etymology
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The concepts of energy and its transformations are useful in explaining natural phenomena. The law of conservation of energy is equally useful. The direction of transformations explained with the help of energyis often influenced byentropyconsiderations also.The exact context of various natural phenomena and transformations varies from one natural science to
another. Some examples are:
Main articles:Mechanics , Mechanical work ,Thermodynamics , and Quantum mechanics
The transformation that constitutes the context of energy in physics, is the change in position or movementof an object which is brought about through the action of a force.Thus in the context of physics, energy is
said to be the ability to dowork .Work is said to be done, in physics, when an object (howsoever small in
size and mass) is moved across a distance, howsoever short, by the action of a force.Mathematically, work is equal to the force multiplied by a distance (more accurately, force integrated over acertain path).
Omtex classes
The home of textEnergy project to studentsThe equation above says that the work (
W
) is equal to the integral of thedot productof the force (
F
involved, work of this force results in a change of the corresponding kindof energy (gravitational, electrostatic, kinetic, etc).An instrument used by physicists to measure energyUnits of energy are thus exactly the same as units of work ( joulesin theSI). Because work isframe
dependent (i.e., can only be defined relative to certaininitial state or reference stateof the system), energy
also becomes frame dependent. For example, although a speeding bullet has kinetic energy in thereferenceframeof a non-moving observer, it has zero kinetic energy in its proper (co-moving) reference frame --
because it takes zero work to accelerate a bullet from zero speed to zero speed. Of course, the selection of areference state (or reference frame) is completely arbitrary - and usually is dictated to maximally simplify
the problem to be dealt with. However, when the total energy of a system cannot be decreased by simplechoice of reference frame, then the (minimal) energy remaining in the system is associated with aninvariant massof the system. In this special frame, called the center-of-momentum frame or center-of-massframe, total energy of the system
E
and both itsinvariant massandrelativistic mass
m
are related byEinstein's famous equation
².The concept of quantized energy is a product of quantum mechanics. Any system can be described by anSchrodinger equation, and for bound systems the solution of this equation leads to certain permitted states,each characterized by anenergy level. In the realm of wave mechanicsthe energy is related to the
frequency of an electromagnetic radiation by thePlanck equation
E = hν
ν
the frequency)According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, mass and energy are equivalent. For example, there are processes, such aselectron- positronannihilation, in which mass is converted completely into energy, and
energy also participates in gravitational interactions. The relationship between the two is:where
Δm
is the amount of rest mass released into the surroundings as active energy (heat, light, kineticenergy),
c
is thespeed of light in a vacuum.
Main articles:Chemical thermodynamics , Chemical kinetics , Thermochemistry ,and
Photochemistry
Atomsand molecules, the central concepts of chemistry, are made up of electronsand protons, and
thereforecoulombic forces are at work during the rearrangement of atoms (during formation or
decomposition of molecules). The energy associated with this movement of charge is what we call"chemical energy".Achemical reactioninvariably absorbs or releases heat or light.According to chemical thermodynamics a
chemical transformation is possible only if so-calledfree energydecreases. The concept of free energy is a
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Free energy is a useful concept in chemistry, because energyconsiderations alone are not sufficient to decide the possibility of achemical reaction. According to thesecond law of thermodynamics,
the entropy of the universe must increase in all processes (includingchemical processes), and energy is transformed from one form to another (including from heat to any other form) so long as the second law is not violated. For example, a gas may expand and thus allow some of itsheat to do work, but this is only possible because the net entropy of the universe
increases
due to the gasexpansion, more than it
decreases
due to the disappearance of heat.The concept of energy levelsfinds application in various kinds of spectroscopy, in which elucidation of
atomicandmolecular structureis based on the phenomenon of the presence of certain "lines" inabsorption
or emissionspectra.These
lines
(so called because they appear as linear features in dispersionspectra (see example above),
such as might be produced by a prismor diffraction grating) are postulated to be due to a certain specific
amount of energy involved in the transition of atoms or molecules, from one state to another. Because acharactistic magnitude of energy is associated with a characteristic frequency (and wavelength) of light (or other electromagnetic radiation), such lines in spectra are direct clues to energetic changes which are permitted to happen only at certain energies, and not others.The
speed
of a chemical reaction (at given temperature T) is related to a yet another concept,activationenergy. The activation energy E, of a chemical reaction, can be visualized as the height of a barrier of energy separating two minima of the energy of the chemically reacting system (the energy of reactants andthe energy of products). Thus, according tostatistical mechanicsthe rate of chemical reactions is proportional to the Boltzmann's population factor
e
−
E
/
kT
, that is the population of molecules having energygreater than or equal to E at the temperature T. This exponential dependence of a reaction rate ontemperature is known as the Arrhenius equation.
Main articles: Biological thermodynamics
, and Chemosynthesis
Growth,developmentandmetabolismare some of the central phenomena in the study of biology.They
cannot be explained without invoking the energy concept. Indeed sustenance of life itself is critically
dependent on energy transformations; living organisms survive because of exchange of energy within andwithout. In a living organism chemical bondsare constantly broken and made to make the exchange and
transformation of energy possible. These chemical bonds are most often bonds in carbohydrates, including
sugars.
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