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Energy Imagine your cup of hot coffee on
a cold morning… which way does
There are many different kinds the heat flow? Does your coffee get
of energy: kinetic, potential, warmer or cooler over time?
elastic, chemical, nuclear, Gravitational potential energy is
electrical, mechanical, thermal...
the amount of energy something
Energy can be transferred, in other has due to its height above the
words it can be changed from one ground. The higher it is and more
form to another and from one mass it has the more gravitational
object to another. potential energy it has.
First Law of Thermodynamics: Kinetic energy is energy of
Energy cannot be created or motion. The faster something is
destroyed in a closed system. A moving and/or the more massive it
system is the place the energy is is the more kinetic energy it has.
happening in.
Imagine a ball dropping and hitting
The terms hot, cold, warm etc. the floor. If the system is closed,
describe what physicists call that means no energy can get in or
thermal energy. Thermal energy escape from the system. The
is how much the molecules are energy the ball started with is the
moving inside an object. The same energy it hit the floor with
faster molecules move, the and transferred to the floor at
more thermal energy that impact. No energy was created or
object has. destroyed, just transferred within
the system.
Heat is the movement of thermal
energy from one object to another. Now here’s a question you may be
asking yourself, “If energy is
Second law of thermodynamics: neither created nor destroyed in a
Heat can only flow from an closed system then why doesn’t a
object of a higher temperature kid swinging on the playground
to an object of a lower swing go forever?
temperature. Heat can be
transferred from one object to Energy is neither created nor
another through conduction, destroyed, but it can be transferred
convection and radiation. into non-useful energy. In the case
of the swinging kid (picture a
pendulum), every swing loses a
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