Forms of Energy
Energy stored due to position in a gravitational field.
What is gravitational potential energy?
A source of renewable energy harnessed from moving water.
What is hydropower?
The flow of electric charge.
What is electric current?
The process that powers nuclear reactors.
What is fission?
The capacity to do work or produce heat.
What is energy?
A wind turbine converts this form of energy into electrical energy.
What is kinetic energy?
The main component of natural gas.
What is methane (CH₄)?
The unit of electric potential difference.
What is a volt?
The process that powers stars like the Sun.
What is fusion?
The rate at which energy is transferred or converted.
What is power?
When a stretched rubber band is released, this energy transforms into kinetic energy.
What is elastic potential energy?
This renewable source depends on the movement of air masses caused by uneven solar heating.
What is wind energy?
In alternating current, electrons periodically reverse direction because of this.
What is a changing magnetic field?
This isotope of plutonium can also be used as reactor fuel.
What is Plutonium-239?
Energy can be neither created nor destroyed according to this fundamental law.
What is the Law of Conservation of Energy?
The total energy of a system’s particles due to motion and position.
What is internal energy?
The main reason fossil fuels are nonrenewable.
What is that they form over millions of years?
Step-up transformers are used for this purpose in power transmission.
What is to reduce power loss by increasing voltage?
The binding energy of a nucleus comes from the conversion of a small amount of this into energy.
What is mass?
The sum of all potential and kinetic energies in a system.
What is mechanical energy?
This law ensures that when energy seems to “disappear,” it is actually transformed into another form
What is the Law of Conservation of Energy?
Energy derived from the decay of radioactive materials inside Earth’s crust.
What is geothermal energy?
The device that converts AC to DC.
What is a rectifier?
In a pressurized water reactor, this substance transfers heat from the core to a secondary loop.
What is water (as a coolant/moderator)?
The branch of physics that studies energy transformations and relationships between heat, work, and energy.
What is thermodynamics?