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Potential Energy vs. Kinetic Energy: What's the Big Deal?

12/13/2016

1 Comment

 
So you probably looked at the title of this post and thought, "I know what potential and kinetic energy are!" But do you? DO YOU REALLY?!

Okay moving on.

Most of you probably do know what potential and kinetic energy are in a nutshell. Well if not, here's some handy definitions that you can copy to your homework:
​Potential Energy: A form of energy that is waiting to be used. An object has potential energy when it is waiting to do something.
Kinetic Energy: A form of energy that is being used to perform an action. An object has kinetic energy when it is in motion or performing an action.

Okay hold up.
Don't actually copy this to your homework.
Because plagiarism and stuff.
DON'T FAIL YOUR SCIENCE CLASS KIDS.

Anyways, are we now all caught up? Good. Let's move on, shall we?

You can define energy by simply saying, "it's kinetic energy" or "it's potential energy", but it goes deeper than that.
Potential and kinetic energy have smaller, subdivided forms that better describe the the energy that the object is using to perform an action.
For example: If you see someone walking down the street, they would be using mechanical kinetic energy. That means that they're using kinetic energy, but they're using the specific form of kinetic energy, mechanical energy, to walk down the street.

OH MY GOD. WHAT'S MECHANICAL ENERGY?! 

Calm down I'm getting there.

Here's a list of all the different forms of energy:

Potential:
  • Gravitational
  • Elastic
  • Chemical
  • Electrical
  • Magnetic

Kinetic:
  • Radiant
  • Acoustic (sound)
  • Mechanical
  • Thermal
  • Electrical

So I was going to embed links into the different forms of energy, but all the websites I tried to find gave an explination that was way too complicated for even me to understand. I could have just copy-pasted a definition from Google, but if you're not allowed to plagiarize, I'm not allowed to plagiarize. 
I would take the time to tell you what each of them mean, but this post is getting too long. I'll tell you about what they mean another time, because if I continue typing, you're going to get bored and stop reading. And how are you going to learn if you don't read the post?

Exactly. You won't.

Hope you learned!
Take care! ^-^
1 Comment
Ms. Sereika
1/4/2017 01:36:05 pm

Phenomenal stuff! Well written and detailed!

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