Energy

Energy makes you smarter by helping you understand where this important aspect of our lives comes from, how we’ve used it throughout history to get to where we are today, and why we need to be careful about how we consume it so that we can have a better future.

How we speak when referring to energy shows us that we’re not certain what it actually means. We use phrases like “he really energized the audience with that speech,” for example. Or if someone is training for a triathlon they might feel energized after a swim.

But did the speaker perform some sort of magic to put electricity into the crowd? And wouldn’t that swim actually deplete your energy? It’s clear that we use this word in lots of different ways to mean multiple different types of it.

The origin of energy is the Greek word energeia, which was created by Aristotle. In this first meaning, it referred to work, motion, or action. Now we think of it more in terms of performing work or having the power to make change happen.

We even consider something as simple as sitting and pondering our next business move to be this type of work. Although we might think we’re not moving, our bodies are still hard at work keeping us alive even while we’re motionless. In other words, we’re still using energy!

According to the first law of thermodynamics, it’s impossible to create or destroy energy. It only gets transferred from one thing to another. This shows us that the idea is more abstract than we might initially realize. It’s more like a way of interpreting how energy is converted between different types.

If you rub your hands together, for example, they become warm. This is an example of changing kinetic energy into thermal energy.

Although energy is a complex idea, it’s been an important part of our history. And more than we might think, as we’re about to discover!

Everything the light touches has to have energy to survive. Well, living things, at least. It doesn’t matter if it’s your power-hungry uncle or a lion on an African savanna. Without energy, it will die. Let’s dive deeper into how this works. Going back to our idea about energy conversion, this is also what living things do to survive. Take plants, for example. They absorb sunlight through leaves and then convert that into a form of food for themselves. This is how they grow. Humans and other animals also utilize energy exchanging processes to stay alive. The bacteria in your stomach helps your body break down complex organics, such as plant leaves, to get the energy that keeps you alive. You can…