| Energy can be found in a number of different forms. It can be chemical energy, electrical energy, heat (thermal energy), light (radiant energy), mechanical energy, and nuclear energy. Plants turn light energy into sugars which anaimals can then use as energy for sustaining their own lives, and plant energy can be released by flames and used for cooking. I don't think this is a complete definition of what energy is, but it gives us some thoughts we can use in the effort to understand energy.
And here is another way of thinking of energy. There are two kinds of energy. Stored energy is called potential energy, and moving energy is called kinetic energy.
At the moment I regret I didn't buy the book I was looking at that explains energy. I was looking for a book that explains the right spin of high and left spin of low pressure, but couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. However, some physics books were very tempting. we can not understand energy without also a good understanding of physics.
I object to the term light energy, because space is black as night. Visible light is the result of radiation from the sun passing through our atmosphere, making light a reaction, a verb, not a thing, a noun. Which makes the question, what is energy, a very interesting question. |