Summary - Energy

Heating an object, making it move faster, or increasing its distance from another object that is attracting it are all examples of things that would require fuel or physical effort. making it move faster, or increasing its distance from another object that is attracting it are all examples of things that would require fuel or physical effort. All these things can be quantified using a single scale of measurement, and we describe them all as forms of energy. The SI unit of energy is the Joule. The reason why energy is a useful and important quantity is that it is always conserved. That is, it cannot be created or destroyed but only transferred between objects or changed from one form to another.

Conservation of energy is the most important and broadly applicable of all the laws of physics, more fundamental and general even than Newton's laws of motion. Heating an object requires a certain amount of energy per degree of temperature and per unit mass, which depends on the substance of which the object consists. Heat and temperature are completely different things. Heat is a form of energy, and its SI unit is the joule (J). Temperature is not a measure of energy. Heating twice as much of something requires twice as much heat, but double the amount of a substance does not have double the temperature. The energy that an object possesses because of its motion is called kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is related to the mass of the object and the magnitude of its velocity vector by the equation

Power is the rate at which energy is transformed from one form to another or transferred from one object to another,

The SI unit of power is the watt (W).