Energy stores

There are seven main stores of energy:

• Magnetic
• Internal (thermal)
• Chemical
• Kinetic
• Electrostatic
• Elastic potential
• Gravitational potential

Elastic potential- The energy stored when an object is stretched or squashed. Drawn catapults, compressed springs, inflated balloons.

Gravitational potential- The energy of an object at height. Aeroplanes, kites, mugs on a table.

Kinetic-The energy of a moving object. Runners, buses, comets.

Chemical- The energy stored in chemical bonds, such as those between molecules.Foods, muscles, electrical cells.

Magnetic-The energy stored when repelling poles have been pushed closer together or when attracting poles have been pulled further apart.Fridge magnets, compasses, maglev trains which use magnetic levitation.

Internal (thermal)-The total kinetic and potential energy of the particles in an object, in most cases this is the vibrations - also known as the kinetic energy - of particles. In hotter objects, the particles have more internal energy and vibrate faster.Human bodies, hot coffees, stoves or hobs. Ice particles vibrate slower, but still have energy.

Electrostatic-The energy stored when repelling charges have been moved closer together or when attracting charges have been pulled further apart.Thunderclouds, Van De Graaff generators.

Systems and stores

Energy can remain in the same store for millions of years or sometimes just for a fraction of a second. There are energy transfers going on all the time - whenever a system changes there is a change in the way some or all of the energy is stored.

Examples of energy transfers:

A swining pirate ship - kinetic energy is transferred into gravitational energy.

Transferring energy

In each of these examples, energy is transferred by one of the following four types of energy transfer:

Mechanical work - a force moving an object through a distance

Electrical work - charges moving due to a potential difference

Heating - due to temperature difference caused electrically or by chemical reaction

Radiation - energy tranferred as a wave, eg light and infrared - light radiation and infrared radiation are emitted from the sun

Examples of dissipation:

• Energy is usually lost by heating up the  surroundings though sometimes energy is dissipated as sound waves.