How Energy Affects the World
By: Cameron Cianci
What do you first think about when you hear the word “energy”. Most people think of a bolt of electricity, but that’s not all it is. Yes there is electricity, but there are also other forms of energy like heat that we usually never consider. We use electricity the most in society, usually without thinking about. Like, whenever you turn on a switch, do you ask, “where did this energy come from?”, or “how was it made?”. Most people don’t, but the electricity we use comes from a variety of different power plants. All of them have advantages and disadvantages, like how the power plants are economically, or how they affect our environment. There are also other forms of energy we usually don’t think about, like chemical, sunlight, motion, sound and heat. Chemical energy is in all organic things, and any living thing could not survive without it. Sunlight powers all life among other things. Motion is needed, because without motion, everything would be still. If someone wants to get your attention and shouts at you, they produce sound waves, and sound waves is a certain type of motion through an object, and if motion is energy, then sound is too. If you have ever used an oven before, then you know that the coils in the oven turn electricity
First off, energy is used in everyday life. Some of it is stored as electricity, and some of it is stored as fossil fuels, like gasoline for a car. We also use electrical energy in batteries, factories, lights, and countless other machines. It would be hard to live without electrical energy. We would not be able to use any lights, houses would probably still be made of logs due to the lack of factories, and there would be no machinery. All of this electrical energy comes from somewhere, and most of it comes from power plants.
There are many different kinds of power plants. Most power plants are fossil fueled. 67% of our electricity comes from fossil fuels (US Energy Information Administration). 39% of that is coal, 27% is natural gas 1% is petroleum (US Energy Information Administration). 11.77% of the energy we get comes from sources that don’t hurt the environment like wind and hydropower (US Energy Information Administration). Those sources are also renewable, but what is troubling is that 86% of the energy we get today comes from sources that are eventually going to run out (US Energy Information Administration). Fossil fuels and uranium are not going to ever replenish, or at least not for a very long time. So if we ran out of these materials today, we would only have 14% of machines still working. Buildings would be dim, factories would barely work. Basic things like refrigeration and microwaves would not work. People could not function in daily life as it is known now. That is why more replenish able sources of power should be created.
The downside to replenish able sources is that most of them do not give a steady output of energy. Solar panels work less well on a cloudy day, and wind turbines do not work when there is no wind. Also some are only able to work in certain locations, like how hydropower only works in bodies of water and geothermal only works near cracks in earth’s crust. All fossil fuel power plants and nuclear sources can be located anywhere. They also give out a steady source of energy.
Another downside to fossil fuel and nuclear power plants besides that they will eventually run out of fuel is that they hurt the environment. Fossil fuels are burned, which means they help to create the greenhouse effect and destroy the ozone layer. Most new power plants have filters which help to decrease those effects, but those filters become waste, and are thrown in dumps and hurt our environment in other ways. Nuclear power plants create worse waste. “Some 300 million tonnes of toxic wastes are produced each year”(Radioactive Waste Management). Financially, nuclear power plants spend 5% of their income on managing waste (Radioactive Waste Management). More of the United States power plants should switch over to replenish able power sources, because they do not harm the environment, and cannot run out.
Other than electricity and other, more obvious forms of energy, there are other forms most people do not think about. Some people do not even think that motion and sound are types of energy. Motion and sound really are types of energy. For an example, when you start a car, the chemical energy in the gasoline is converted into heat energy that warms it, sound energy by the noise of the engine, and motion by letting it move. If the chemical energy was not there, then it could not be converted into the other forms of energy.
Light is also a form of energy. It affects our world by heating the crust, and making objects visible. Without light, plants could not exist and everything feeds of plants or feeds off something that feeds off plants so no life that we know could exist. Also, even if plants somehow survived, the earth would be cold so water would freeze and life could not exist because every living thing requires water. Besides what light does for our survival, it also helps us out every day. Light bounces off an object, and that object absorbs some wavelengths (colors) turning it into an image of whatever is there. These wavelengths of light stimulate our retina and sends information into our brain so that we see what is there. So without light we could not see.
Motion (also known as kinetic energy(Forms of Energy: Motion, Heat, Light, Sound)) is everywhere. Everything you can think of has motion in it. Walking, driving, playing games, and writing essays for science all require motion. This type of energy affects everything, and without it, everything would be still. Heat and sound are also types of motion. Heat is molecules vibrating, and the faster the molecules vibrate the hotter it is. Heat is in every object (unless it is at 0 degrees Kelvin). Also sound is a type of motion. Sound is a wave of air, which means sound waves are air molecules moving into each other and causing a chain reaction through the air (Forms of Energy: Motion, Heat, Light, Sound). Our ears can tell the difference between wavelengths to hear different pitches and words.
Nuclear energy is a type of energy that people never think about. “Nuclear energy is the stored potential of the nucleus, or center, of an individual atom.” (Forms of Energy: Motion, Heat, Light, Sound). This energy is needed to keep the protons and neutrons tied together. This energy is released in nuclear factories by cutting the bonds holding the together. “When atoms split apart or fuse together, they release stored nuclear energy, sometimes in huge quantities.” (Forms of Energy: Motion, Heat, Light, Sound). It is easier to cut these bonds in certain materials because of weak nuclear force. That force is why nuclear power plants use those types of materials. When these bonds are cut, they release many different forms of radiation. Most of these forms of radiation are harmful for humans. The good side to this is that they create a huge source of energy that can be transformed in generators into electrical energy.
Elastic energy is a type of potential energy. Potential energy means that it is a type of stored energy. Imagine you have a rubber band, if you pull it back; you just stored it with potential energy. If you release that rubber band, then that potential energy is turned into motion, or kinetic energy. “These bonds absorb energy as they are stressed, and release that energy as they are relaxed.” (Forms of Energy: Motion, Heat, Light, Sound). In the absence of this form of energy muscles would not work, because they contract, and nothing could bend or stretch. This is a very important type of energy for motion because torsion and stretching is important in the real world.
Hopefully it is now understood that energy has many different uses in the world. Energy comes in many different forms. We use and create these forms in different ways. We mostly think about electricity when people say energy, but there are also different types of energy that all affect the world differently. Light heats the world up and allows us to see, motion allows movement, heat, and sound. Electricity is usually what we use to create these other forms. It is indefinite that, without even one of these forms of energy, the world could not function as it does today.
thanks for reading. please post correction ideas or problems that you found.