Renewable Energy

1205 Words3 Pages

Energy

Energy is a crucial necessity and with the ever increasing need for it and the high and fluctuating prices of oil, researchers are constantly coming up with newer and more sophisticated alternative sources of energy. However, energy comes at a cost, as it is either expensive or it possesses high health risks. This essay presents the concept of energy by discussing the two major types of energy, the various forms it could take, including renewable sources of energy, energy conservation and above all it talks about the safest and cleanest alternatives.

Gottfried Leibniz first coined the term energy from the concept vis viva to refer to the square totality of an object’s mass and its speed, where total vis viva is stored. Energy is commonly defined as the capacity of a physical object or system to act on other objects or systems (Dean 8). The mass of an object determines its energy, which can be changed from one form to another. Since there is no universally stipulated determinant of energy, energy is expressed in comparative units for instance ergs and calories. The contemporary measurement of energy is the joule, which is its SI unit. Similarly, there are other acceptable, though larger units of expressing energy such as kilowatt hour and the British thermal unit.

There are two main types of energy: kinetic energy and potential energy. Kinetic energy is an object’s or system’s energy of motion, which is a product of its movement (Nardo, Shropshire and Young). It is the effort required to accelerate an object to a given speed and it is maintained by power fields and particles that have been subjected into a new physical setting in the field as a result of being acted on by another system. On the other hand, potential en...

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...he demand and use of renewable energy has grown over years. Similarly, there are other new renewable energy technologies being created and governments are increasingly supporting the use of renewable sources to supplement and even replace other costly and environmental unfriendly sources.

Works Cited

Broyles, Dave. What is Energy? Ottawa, Trafford Publishing, 2001. Print.

Foland, Andrew Dean. Energy. New York, NY: Infobase Publishing, 2007. Print.

Morgan, Jason. “Comparing Energy Costs of Nuclear, Coal, Gas, Wind and Solar.”

Nuclearfissionary.com. Nuclear Fissionary, 2 Apr. 2010. Web. 9 Mar. 2012.

Steven Shropshire and Terrence E. Young. Kinetic Energy: The Energy of Motion.

Minneapolis, MN: Compass Point Books, 2008. Print.

Twidell, John and Anthony D. Weir. Renewable Energy Resources. 2nd ed. New York, NY:

Taylor & Francis, 2006. Print.

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