The concepts of work and energy exist in our daily
lives. In terms of physics, energy is the capacity to do work. We
will elaborate further on this in the following sections of this
chapter.
Energy exists in many forms. We will learn that the two of the main
categories are kinetic energy (= energy of motion) and potential
energy (= energy of position). There are several main classes of
potential energy: Mechanical, Chemical, Electrical, Nuclear,
...
We will also learn that total energy is conserved for an isolated
system. This means that energy can be converted from one form to
another, but the total energy (= sum of all different energy forms)
does not change.
The concepts of work and energy will give us elegant methods of
working problems that would be very complicated using kinematics and
dynamics.
The SI-unit of work (and energy) is the Joule (J).
The dimensionality of work is
Many other energy units are in use. To make your life easier when you try to convert from one energy unit to another, we have provided a handy unit conversion engine.
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