What exactly is Energy?

The Systeme Internationale (SI) unit for measuring electricity is the Joule (denoted 'J'). A joule is the equivalent of approximately 6.24x10^16 or 6.24 quintillion electronvolts.

Now this is where people start to say "what is fire made of?" "Is fire a solid, liquid or gas?" You might also be asking if electricity is a solid, liquid or gas. It is neither.

All that is around us is made of matter. We are made of mainly hydrogen, oxygen, a bit of calcium, carbon and some other elements. The light above your computer is made of either neon, krypton, xenon or halogen elements. The Boeing 767 I just flew in today was made of a compound of aluminium, nickel, iron and other metals as well as some non-metals. As you can see, everything 'touchable' is made of matter. What is matter made of? Matter is made of protons, neutrons and electrons. Now if you're really interested, these protons, neutrons and electrons are called 'subatomic particles' as together they make up an atom. These subatomic particles are made of quarks and leptons, known as elementary particles as they are the base of all matter. It is greatly expected that there are more, darker, unknown, harder to detect particles that give mass its gravitational field. This particle is suggested to be named as a 'graviton' once found. if the graviton did exist, it would have to have no mass, since gravity's power is unlimited. If it had a mass, then gravity would be limited, and it's not (we know this because I can drop my pen onto the floor and it'll give a certain amount of energy, but I can also shoot down the International Space Station and we'll get a massive crash scene, giving off much more energy than the pen).

In 1905, Albert Einstein proposed the formula E=MC^2. This formula basically says that mass itself is energy, and this was drastically demonstrated during the World War II atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Stable uranium 235 (235 is the sum of protons and neurons. This number is known as the nucleon number) was mixed with stable uranium 235, but this uranium is continuously emitting neutrons, so a neutron will go and join the other block of uranium 235, making it uraium 236 (but only for a few nanoseconds), until the atom splits apart, making Krypton (a gas) and Baryon (a solid). if we add the nucleon number of the 2 products of the reaction (Krypton and Barium), we should get 236, right?

Ba141 + Kr92 = 233

We have lost 3 nucleons! These nucleons were neutrons, and went flying around and probably into another atom of stable uranium 235 to make it unstable uranium 236, and start a whole chain reaction. That is not all. The end product from the first reaction (the 3 neutrons, the Krypton and Barium) together turned out to be 1/5 of a proton lighter in mass than the uranium that we started off with! The end products are less than what we originally had, and we also got a hell of a lot more energy out of nowhere. That energy came from the 1/5 of a proton's mass. If you take a kilogram of TNT, it has about 4 million Joules (J) of energy once exploded. That could maybe split apart a dam wall. If we took 500g and 500g or uranium 235 (500+500 is 1000) we will get 80 trillion Joules.

Here's a comparison:

4,000,000

80,000,000,000,000

The one is almost double the other's actual size on my computer screen, never mind actual value! So, you want the actual value?

80,000,000,000,000 / 4,000,000 = 2,000,000

That means that the atomic bomb is 2 million times more powerful per unit mass than a TNT bomb! 2 million! So, what could 80x10^12 (that's like saying 80 trillion) Joules do? It could probably cause a tidal wave that would kill hundreds of millions, probably even billions.

If you want to know more, feel free to e-mail me from my profile page.

You know nothing if that's what you know.

Energy is a category of states and things.

A category is a mental construct, not a "thing"

Although the dividing line between a concept and a thing is arbitrary. All "things" are concepts in the sense that they have no independent existence. One thing is known to have independent existence: the Universe. Dividing it up into pieces (things) can be done many many different ways.

I suppose you think numbers exist too and that you know what they are....

Energy is a property - or more accurately a category of properties.

To get a category confused with thing is a sophomoric mistake. roses are a category. The rose I gave my gf for valentine's was a thing. So, you need to be careful. Is a car a thing or a category? Depends on what you are thinking when you use the term.

On a different level, the rose I gave my gf on Valentine's was by common consensus a thing in that it can be generallly agreed that "something" existed along a 4-dimensional spacetime timeline which most would agree had continuity (despite the contradiction between that concept and our understanding of the quantum nature of reality).

What is Energy?

What is Entropy?

What is a number?

What is a Woman?

Finally, before you make some silly claim about understanding some thing, you might want to consider that we live in a nonlocal (four dimensional) spacetime where energy is not conserved. When you have learned enough to understand the truth and falsity of that statement, you'll have a good start on the road to understanding.

In the start people talked about work, power x distance.

Then they have used the wind and water mills. After that energy was defined as ability to make work.( the work might not be used and the water runs into the sea and loose its potential in friction and heat energy.

People also has studied the use of heat to warm a volume of materials.

The definition work or ability to work is some explanation.

We have nuclear energy, chemical energy, potential energy, etc.

These are stored work of some kind.

OK, people are posting a lot of complicated answers which I doubt are what you want, so I'll try simplify. Energy is the ability to do work. And work is a force applied for a certain distance. So the most basic explanation would be that energy is the stuff that causes objects to move or function.

Hi energy is usually work done in one form or another it can be heat alone or movement or an combination of both.but a static body has no energy only when it is moved it absorbs energy or in moving produces energy, i would like some one to expand on this idea.

energy is the capacity of a system to do work (the word derives from the greek for action, to give you an idea). It is always conserved. It can not be created or destroyed. It can however be converted into mass and vice versa, via E = mc^2.

If you're looking for a conceptual idea of what energy is, I don't think there is one.

a thermodynamic quantity equivalent to the capacity of a physical system to do work; the units of energy are joules or ergs; "energy can

Energy is the ability to work, when we describe work in joules thats when we use energy.

Like when u pull a chair u are using energy from your hand to pull the chair or ur using work (Joules) joules is the unit for energy

When describing Kinetic Energy for e.g when u are riding rolar coaster right, the kinetic is the movement of energy. its moving the rolar coaster how much energy is needed. That is the term in joules so in physics we use Joules, in terms of energy

Did I explain a little did it helped?

Energy is a concept useful in physics as is mass, force, etc