Energeia

“ Generalizing this teaching of experiment the illustrious biologist divined the fundamental law of energetics before the idea of energetics had made much way in France. Every act which expends energy, which produces heat or motion, any manifestation whatever that may be looked upon as an energetic transformation, necessarily expends energy, and that energy is borrowed from the substance of the organism. These substances are simplified, broken up, and destroyed. Now the functional activity of the muscle produces heat and movement in warm-blooded as well as in cold-blooded animals. ”

“ As motion, heat, and nervous power the body uses most of its energy.
The Source of Bodily Energy.—As already indicated, the energy of the body is supplied through the food and the oxygen. These contain energy in the potential form, which becomes kinetic (active) through their uniting with each other in the body. Somewhat as the power of the steam engine is derived from the combustion of fuel in the furnaces, the energy of the body is supplied through the oxidations at the cells. ”

“ We have now seen under what conditions the visible energy of actual motion may be changed—1stly, into energy of position; 2ndly, into the two energies which embrace absorbed heat; 3rdly, into electrical separation; and finally into electricity in motion. As far as we know, visible energy cannot directly be transformed into chemical separation, or into radiant energy. ”

“ Energy is mental. The only real energy there is or can be is the energy of the infinite mind we call God. This the human mind copies, or imitates, by reason of what has been called ‘the law of suppositional opposites,’ already dwelt upon at some length. Everything manifests this so-called law. Electricity is both positive and negative. Gravitation is regarded by some physicists as the negative aspect of radiation-pressure, the latter being the pressure supposed to be exerted by all material bodies upon one another. ”

“ Stored-up energy not in use has been given a name by scientific men. They call it potential energy. In this way it is distinguished from kinetic or circulating energy by which is meant energy that is at work. For example, a ton of coal in the bin contains a certain amount of potential energy, which is capable of being converted into kinetic energy by combustion. ”

“ When we burn wood for heat, we are using energy that the tree took from the sun. When we burn coal or oil, we are using the energy of sunlight that was stored many millions of years ago.
All of this energy is stored in the atoms of the wood, coal, or oil. But when we burn these materials for fuel, we release only the energy of the electrons. ”

“ When one stands on the bank of the river and sees the great waterfall as it plunges over the precipice, exerting a force of from five to ten million horse-power, one is overwhelmed in contemplation of its possibilities as a source of energy that may be converted into work, mechanical and chemical, through the medium of electricity.
The genius of man has devised a way by which some of this constantly wasting energy may be converted into electricity and distributed to different points to perform various kinds of work. ”

“ Some day, large central-station power plants may use direct conversion to improve their efficiencies and reliabilities.
How is Energy Transformed?
What is energy and how do we change it? Energy is a fundamental concept of science involving the capacity for doing work. Kinetic or mechanical energy is the most obvious form of energy. It is defined as
E = 1⁄2 mv2
where
E = energy (expressed in joules)
m = mass of the moving object (in kilograms)
v = velocity (in meters per second)
Energy can also be stored in chemical and nuclear substances or in the water behind a dam. ”

“ The thought was therefore present, both to Mayer and to Joule, of regarding heat and work as equivalent quantities, so connected with each other that what is lost in one form universally appears in another. The result of this was a substantial conception of heat and of work, and ultimately a substantial conception of energy. Here every physical change of condition is regarded as energy, the destruction of which generates work or equivalent heat. An electric charge, for example, is energy. ”

“ Let us begin first with the energy implied in fuel. We can, of course, burn fuel, or cause it to combine with the oxygen of the air; and we are thereby provided with large quantities of heat of high temperature, by means of which we may not only warm ourselves and cook our food, but also drive our heat-engines, using it, in fact, as a source of mechanical power.
Fuel is of two varieties—wood and coal. Now, if we consider the origin of these we shall see that they are produced by the sun's rays. ”

“ It had created the system C + 2O. So that the solar energy produces the chemical potential energy which was so long before it was utilized. Combustion expends this energy in making carbonic acid over again.
Materialization of Energy.—The fertility of the idea of energy is therefore, as we see from all these examples, due to the relations it establishes between the natural phenomena of which it exhibits the necessary relation, destroyed by the excessive analysis of early science. It shows us that in the world of phenomena there is nothing but transformations of energy. ”

“ We thus perceive that it is not the coal, by itself, that forms the source of energy, but this is due to the fact that we have coal, or carbon, in one place, and oxygen in another, while we have also the means of causing them to unite with each other whenever we wish. If there were no oxygen in the air, coal by itself would be of no value.
Electricity: its Properties.
79. Our readers have now been told about the force of cohesion that exists between molecules of the same body, and also about that of chemical affinity existing between atoms of different bodies. ”

“ An accumulation of positive electricity repels an accumulation of negative—if indeed we can correctly use 'accumulation' for a negativity—and it is my idea that the earth is the container of a gigantic accumulation of this meta—or hyper-electricity which we are postulating; and our bodies contain a charge of the opposite sign."
"But, Doctor, the retention of a charge of static electricity by a body in the presence of one of the opposite sign requires insulation of the containing bodies; for instance, lightning is a breaking down of the air insulation between the ground and a cloud. ”

“ But the energy, though spent, is not lost, for when the liquid again freezes, or when the vapour again condenses, this energy is once more transformed into the shape of sensible heat, just as when a stone is dropped from the top of a house, its energy of position is transformed once more into actual energy. ”

“ As sad experience on the ocean only too frequently teaches, energy can be transmitted by waves as well as in any other way. But every mechanic will tell you that the transmission of energy, whatever be the means employed, implies certain well-known conditions. Let it be that the energy is to be used to turn the spindles of a cotton-mill. The engineer can tell you just how many horse-power he must supply for every working-day, and it is equally true that a definite amount of energy must come from the sun to do each day's work on the surface of the globe. ”

“ Mechanical or "work" energy is dissociated from any molecular action. On the other hand, the application of such forms of energy as heat or electrical energy to material leads to distinctly molecular or internal effects, in which some alteration in the constitution of the body affected may ensue. ”

“ In a paper read to the Philosophical Society of Glasgow on the 5th of January 1853, a first attempt was made to investigate such principles, by defining actual energy and potential energy, and by demonstrating a general law of the mutual transformations of those kinds of energy, of which one particular case is a previously known law of the mechanical action of heat in elastic bodies, and another, a subsequently demonstrated law which forms the basis of Professor William Thomson's Theory of thermo-electricity. ”

“ The oxygen and hydrogen now have potential energy, and, if they be allowed to combine, this will manifest itself as the light and heat of the explosion. These examples will serve to illustrate the nature of the changes which energy undergoes. These are of the nature of transferences of energy from one body to another, and of transformations from one mode or manifestation to another. The most important point that has been established during this century with regard to energy is that, throughout all its transferences and transformations, it can be neither created nor destroyed. ”

“ The existence of various forms of energy had been known, of course, for ages; there was the energy of a falling stone, the energy produced by burning wood or coal or any other substance, but the essential identity of all these forms of energy had not been suspected. The conception of energy as something which, like [Pg 283] matter, was constant in amount, which could not be created nor destroyed, was one of the great scientific acquisitions of the past century. ”

“ The term "energy" comprehends every state of a substance which constitutes a capacity for performing work. Quantities of energy are measured by the quantities of work which they constitute the means of performing.
"Actual energy" comprehends those kinds of capacity for performing work which consist in particular states of each part of a substance, how small soever; that is, in an absolute accident, such as heat, light, electric current, vis-viva. Actual energy is essentially positive. ”

“ During the past thirty years there has come into common use another term, unknown in any technical sense before that time, namely, energy. What was once called the conservation of force is now called the conservation of energy, and we now often hear of forms of energy. Thus, heat is said to be a form of energy, and the forms of energy are convertible into one another, as the so-called forces were formerly supposed to be transformable into one another. ”

“ I have reached the conclusion that every physical phenomenon is due to the operation of energy transformations or energy transmissions embodied in material, and takes place under the action or influence of incepting energy fields. In any instance the precise nature of the phenomena is dependent on the peculiar form of energy actively engaged, on the nature of the material to which this energy is applied, and on the nature of the incepting field which influences the process. ”

“ That the latent energy pent up in illuminating gas should produce more light when converted into electricity, notwithstanding the loss at each stage of the operation, than when burned directly, is explained by the fact that the larger part of the energy of burning gas is manifest in the form of heat, the lesser part in the form of light. In electricity we have just the opposite conditions. ”

“ Assuming no influx of energy from without, the energy expended in the movement of the gaseous material must be obtained at the expense of the inherent heat and work energy of the gas, and these two functions will decrease simultaneously. The heat and work energy of the gas or its inherent energy is thus taken to provide the energy necessary for the expansive movement. ”

“ In tropical regions the heat is not wanted. In the steam-engine, chemical energy is first changed into heat, and heat into mechanical energy; in the body the change is, probably, much of it direct, and not through the intermediation of heat. ”

“ As Professor Tait has expressed it,—"The grand principle of conservation of energy, which asserts that no portion of energy can be put out of existence, and no amount [Pg 103] of energy can be brought into existence by any process at our command, is simply a statement of the invariability of the quantity of energy in the universe,—a companion statement to that of the invariability of the quantity of matter." ”

“ The concentrated heating power, latent in every sunbeam, and the combustible gases hidden in every drop of water will be supplemental sources of boundless energy for all ages on this wonderful magnetic planet. All sickness and ailments of the body are the result of the derangement of the electricity of the body, for which there is a remedy. ”

“ The more gas I evolve (that is, the more actively I apply the heat) the larger is the flame. You see it is a very large flame now. If I take the spirit lamp away, the production of gas grows less and less, until my flame almost dies out; but you see if I again apply my heat and set more gas free, I revive my flame. I want you to grasp this very important fact, upon which I cannot enlarge further now, that given flame, I must have a gas to burn, and therefore heat as a power is needed before I can obtain flame. ”

“ It seems at present that electricity is to be the illuminating agent of the future, and that, as gas has now all but superseded candles and oil, so in turn gas will soon be superseded by electricity. The reasons for this change are several and various, and follow that most immutable of natural laws, the law of the survival of the fittest. ”

“ Their energy-transmutive attributes render them most serviceable in the important task of maintaining universal energy balance, or power equilibrium. At one time they seem to consume or store energy; at other times they appear to exude or liberate energy. ”