ENERGY

So I don't think that today was an official lab we are supposed to blog about but I am anyway, because I found today interesting.

Energy loosely defined is the capacity to apply a force. The two types of energy we learned about today were kinetic energy and potential energy. Kinetic energy means energy from an object in motion, and potential energy is energy from an object not in motion. For example, potential energy is stored when the motor moves a roller coaster up a hill. That potential is converted into kinetic energy by the force of gravity as the roller coaster moves down the hill. You wouldn't be able to make this conversion in a weightless environment. On Mars, it would take less energy to move the roller coaster to the top of the hill, but once it was there, you would get less energy moving down, because there is less gravity. I'm beginning to see how this ties into Newton's laws.

As a class, we came up with a list of ways energy is applied:

solar
geothermal
atomic (nuclear)
hydro (specifically water in motion)
chemical
mechanical
electrical
wind
hydrocarbons (carbons in a row)
electromagnetism

Anja and I had the same question; that maybe people or animals can make energy. For example, a person walking down the street creates friction, which causes heat, which is a form of energy. But then Bert told us that heat isn't exactly a form of energy. Which leads to the First Law of Thermodynamics:

Energy is never created or destroyed, only channeled/transformed.

Basically this means that the energy that we had at the beginning of time is the energy we have now, and always will have. But how was the energy created in the first place? And what is the beginning of time? Was energy created as the universe was made?

We also talked about the forms of energy we, as humans, use most. The majority of energy comes from fossil fuels: oil, coal, and natural gas. But originally, all the energy came from the sun, right? But what are fossil fuels and how were they created?

The mini-culmination we will do this term has something to do with how we can use energy on Mars. Because we need energy to survive and power our space craft to get home again. I think that the most likely source of energy that we could use on Mars would be wind energy. There are high winds on Mars, and we could bring the parts needed to set up some wind turbans. I'm guessing, but this is how a wind turban works. There are blades on the top that are turned by the wind. When the blades are turned, there are connected to a pole. The pole has a magnet on the end so when the magnet is turned, the electrons inside atoms start spinning. Then the electrons could be stored in something like a large battery. And we have are energy!! That was just my guess of how a wind turban works. I think we will find out for real in labs next week. There are no fossil fuels on Mars, because those are made from ancient living things, like a humongous tree, not small bacteria on Mars. So the major source of energy humans use will be gone. We could also take solar panels to Mars because there is no atmosphere and the sun could reach them, even though it is farther away from the sun that earth is. But how does a solar panel convert to energy? Maybe, the light waves and particles, hit the atom, which makes the electrons in the atom to move. Then some wire could attach it to something like a battery to store all the moving electrons. But I'm probably wrong about that, too.

Too many questions (maybe that's a good things)!!