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In physics, energy (from the Greek ἐνέργεια - energeia, "activity, operation", from

ἐνεργός - energos, "active, working"[1]) is a quantity that is often understood as the


ability to perform work. This quantity can be assigned to any particle, object, or
system of objects as a consequence of its physical state.
Energy is a scalar physical quantity. In the International System of Units (SI), energy
is measured in joules, but in some fields other units such as kilowatt-hours and
kilocalories are also used. Different forms of energy include kinetic, potential,
thermal, gravitational, sound, elastic and electromagnetic energy. The forms of
energy are often named after a related force. German physicist Hermann von
Helmholtz established that all forms of energy are equivalent - energy in one form
can disappear but the same amount of energy will appear in another form.[2] A
restatement of this idea is that energy is subject to a conservation law over time.
Any form of energy can be transformed into another form. When energy is in a form
other than thermal energy, it may be transformed with good or even perfect
efficiency, to any other type of energy. With thermal energy, however, there are
often limits to the efficiency of the conversion to other forms of energy, due to the
second law of thermodynamics
In all such energy transformation processes, the total energy remains the same.
Energy may not be created nor destroyed. This principle, the conservation of energy,
was first postulated in the early 19th century, and applies to any isolated system.
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.[3]
Although the total energy of a system does not change with time, its value may
depend on the frame of reference. For example, a seated passenger in a moving
airplane has zero kinetic energy relative to the airplane, but non-zero kinetic energy
(and higher total energy) relative to the Earth.
The word energy derives from Greek ἐνέργεια (energeia), which possibly appears for
the first time in the work Nicomachean Ethics[4] of Aristotle in the 4th century BC.

The concept of energy emerged out of the idea of vis viva, which Leibniz 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 random motion of the constituent parts of matter, a
view shared by Isaac Newton, although it would be more than a century until this was
generally accepted. In 1807, Thomas Young was possibly the first to use the term
"energy" instead of vis viva, in its modern sense.[5] Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis
described "kinetic energy" in 1829 in its modern sense, and in 1853, William Rankine
coined the term "potential energy". It was argued for some years whether energy
was a substance (the caloric) or merely a physical quantity, such as momentum.

Energy in various contexts since the beginning of the universe


The concept of energy and its transformations is useful in explaining and predicting
most natural phenomena. The direction of transformations in energy (what kind of
energy is transformed to what other kind) is often described by entropy (equal
energy spread among all available degrees of freedom) considerations, as 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.
Energy transformations in the universe over time are characterized by various kinds
of potential energy that has been available since the Big Bang, later being "released"
(transformed to more active types of energy such as kinetic or radiant energy), when
a triggering mechanism is available.

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