# Energy and stuff



## Stormcat (Mar 22, 2016)

My chimerids have the power to manipulate the energy around them...

... But what _IS_ energy? 

I haven't set foot in a science classroom in years, and I can only remember a few tidbits of information from my school days. I need to find the most dumbed-down instructions on physics possible (Preferably online sources).

Also, Has anyone ever figured out what legendary Mad Genius Nikola Tesla wrote about "free energy" and his other works? Since Electricity seems to be the topic here, might as well mention the electric Titan himself. He may have been stark raving mad, but surely he must've been on the brink of a major discovery.


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## Glyax (Mar 22, 2016)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy


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## Bishop (Mar 22, 2016)

Asking "what is energy" is the physics equivalent of asking a psychologist: "What are emotions?" The question is so vague, covers literally centuries of study and many, many subgroups, each with their own subgroups...

If you're making a magic system for a book, drop the physics pretense. You're only going to end up angering physicists. Just make it how you want it made. This is one of the few cases where it benefits the writer to take total creative control.


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## Stormcat (Mar 22, 2016)

Bishop said:


> Asking "what is energy" is the physics equivalent of asking a psychologist: "What are emotions?" The question is so vague, covers literally centuries of study and many, many subgroups, each with their own subgroups...
> 
> If you're making a magic system for a book, drop the physics pretense. You're only going to end up angering physicists. Just make it how you want it made. This is one of the few cases where it benefits the writer to take total creative control.



Fair enough.


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## sailorguitar (Mar 28, 2016)

Energy.  It's what makes work, 'work'. The way I understand it is that energy generates work, or produces work; work is something that uses energy to produce work.  If that makes sense. Energy is the muscle, while work is the product of that muscle. 

Riding a bicycle can illustrate this.  Energy begins at your legs pushing on the pedals, and energy transfers work to the gears which turn the wheels and move you forward. Because of the mechanics, physics shit, and working on the gears, and inertia (which is also energy), you continue to move. That's how thing work.

Energy generates work and work causes things to happen.

Hope that helps.


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## sailorguitar (Mar 28, 2016)

That ^^ up there,  isn't totally clear.  Energy doesn't _generate_ work, but it produces the potential for work. I am by no means a physicist, nor do I have a degree in mechanical engineering, and I don't know all of the proper words used to describe energy.  But, if you can understand "work", you will be much closer to understanding "energy". It's all about how energy happens and what it does. 

I mostly view energy through the lense of a steam turbine engine.  The excited molecules of dry, vaporized water - which have been turned into super heated steam, (by way of being heated up by _heat_ _energy_ (fuel burning in the boiler - or a nuclear reaction where atoms are split (or joined) and release _energy in the form of heat_)) - are passed across the blades of a turbine, which cause the turbine to turn, which is the _work_.  Heat energy causes the water molecules to move away from each other and _vibrate _more quickly, and as they do so they create energy, at least on the level we need in a steam turbine engine.  There's already energy in liquid water, it's just not enough to spin a big, heavy turbine, unless you drop it down from a water fall, or a dam, and then you would be using the energy - from the weight of the water - caused by gravity.

One very cool thing about energy is that you cannot create it or destroy it, but you can change it and manipulate it and use its attributes in different forms, or states, because everything will act differently in a different state.  Usually, in order to manipulate energy you have to change the state of the molecules of whatever substance you're using are in.  For example, changing water from a liquid form to a vaporized form and thereby causing the molecules to become excited and energized - _vibrate -_, will produce different effects than water in a liquid form. Water is a liquid because the molecules - H2O (2 hygrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom) - are cool enough to want to stay pretty calm and hang out near each other.  When things heat up they move apart, become agitated (like you would in a house fire) and turn into a vapor, or steam. You can actually heat up water to the point where the molecules break apart and the hydrogen atoms seperate from the oxygen atom - you would no longer have water at this point.  Hydrogen is very explosive (there is alot of energy packed into that little atom) and you typically don't want hydrogen in that state, unless you want to use that energy for a particular purpose. Ice is water below freezing temperature and has so little movement from the molecules that water has become a solid form.  The molecules _stick togethe_r. When wood is burned, it also changes form, from wood and into heat and ash (and I think carbon dioxide and maybe some other invisible stuff too), but the molecules that formed the wood don't go away, _they have just been seperated from each other and no longer represent wood in a solid form_, and in doing so, _energy is released in the form of heat_.  If you harness the energy that has been released by burning the wood and make it do something, you will produce _work_. In a steam power plant - or any power plant for that matter -, fuel with the greatest amount of _heat energy_ is used because it is the most effective fuel to get whatever engine is being turned to perform whatever _work _is needed - effeciency.  Gasoline is used in cars. Gasoline has a low heat energy content, diesel has a greater amount of heat energy and is used in machines that require more power to work; coal is used in almost 40% of U.S. power plants because it is readily accesible (and cheap) and has a very high heat energy content, much higher than diesel or gasoline.  But with the higher energy content comes more emmisions.

 There is a certain amount of energy in the universe and what we have, we're stuck with, but there is a lot of it and we are all surrounded by it, and in fact we are made of energy, we are energy; it's what we do with energy that causes things to happen.  Hug someone and you'll transfer energy. Eating is consuming energy in order to give you more energy, or continued energy, and whatever your body doesn't need comes out the other end (emissions). 

There are many different forms of energy:  kinetic energy, mechanical energy, chemical energy, heat energy, gravitational energy, nuclear energy, light energy... on and on.

This got a little long winded but I hope it helps.


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## Jack of all trades (Mar 28, 2016)

Try Google. Seriously. There's lots of info out there. Sites that are dot edu are educational and may be more trustworthy than some dot coms. I think it would generate better discussions if you presented some info and asked for opinions rather than asking vague questions like, "What is energy?".


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## InstituteMan (Mar 29, 2016)

To echo others above, the physics concept of "energy" requires more than a discussion board thread to understand, even if the thread is on the best writers' site on the interwebs. 

By far the easiest thing for you to do would be to not worry about this detail, either by hacking off the scientifically inclined by abusing the physics involved or by taking something closer to a straight magic approach (even if you provide a fig leaf of high level scientific-like explanation of the abilities). 

The less easy approach would be to hit the books, at least metaphorically. You're not going to be able to understand energy in a vacuum (which is a joke, but also true in the colloquial sense). You'll need to understand the broader concepts of physics that relate to energy to understand energy. There's many types of energy in the matter that I am made of, such as the heat energy of body, the chemical energy in the various molecules of me, the energy holding the electrons in my atoms, the energy binding the nuclei of my atoms together, and ultimately the mass energy of it all. I've been a little sloppy in how I called each of those out, and I left out several other types of energy that are part of what I call "me," so don't take that list as the end-all and be-all.

I'd suggest starting by watching Cosmos. The remade version with Neil deGrasse Tyson is very good, and well worth streaming just for the pleasure of watching it. The show isn't about energy per se, but it is about the universe, so energy is necessarily involved--even when it looks like the discussion is about biology (which harnesses energy for self-replication) or stars (massive objects that convert energy from one form to another).   

Another good entry point into some of the basics of physics is Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman (they are essentially the transcripts of lectures by Feynman's lectures to a non-scientist audience, and they really are easy to understand). Once again, even the bits that aren't about energy are actually related to energy, because energy underlies everything that happens in the universe--and is, in a very literal sense, equivalent to the matter we all know and love being.

Whichever route you take, good luck and happy writing!


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## ppsage (Mar 29, 2016)

Isn't energy just force over time?


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## InstituteMan (Mar 29, 2016)

ppsage said:


> Isn't energy just force over time?



No, although work (at least, the physics concept of work) is force over a distance. There's a relationship between kinetic energy and work, and that relationship kind of looks like energy is force over time if you squint--but that's not really an accurate description of kinetic energy. Of course, kinetic energy (the energy of a moving object) is just one form of energy, so there's other types of energy to consider as well.

It's worth noting that kinetic energy can feel like heat to us when the objects moving are the size of molecules.


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## sailorguitar (Mar 30, 2016)

Force over Time looks like Impulse.


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## Terry D (Mar 30, 2016)

In its simplest terms, energy is the *potential* to affect matter. Yes, it takes energy to do work, but energy can, and does, exist without work. Think of a static charge, the energy (potential) exists even before it is discharged.


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## K.S. Crooks (Apr 2, 2016)

Energy is the ability to do work or bring about change. You can also say energy is anything that exists but has no mass.


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