What are the two major types of energy, and what is the difference between them? Give an example of each.?

Answer 1

Kinetic and Potential Energy

Kinetic energy (SI unit: the joule) is energy that a body possesses as a result of its motion. It is formally defined as the work needed to accelerate a body from rest to its current velocity. Having gained this energy during its acceleration, the body maintains this kinetic energy unless its speed changes. Negative work of the same magnitude would be required to return the body to a state of rest from that velocity.

Under certain assumptions, this work (and thus the kinetic energy) is equal to:


where m is the object's mass and v is the object's speed.





Potential energy is energy that is "captured" in an object, with the potential to be released. There are various different types of potential energy. Many of these – such as gravitational, elastic, or electrical potential energy – arise from the relative positions or configurations of objects. The potential energy may then be defined as the work that must be done against a particular force – in these examples, gravitational, electrical or elastic force – so as to achieve that configuration. Chemical potential energy is slightly different, at least in its macroscopic manifestation: it is the energy that is available for release from chemical reactions (for example, by burning a fuel).

Answer 2

potential energy, this is stored energy

kinetic energy, this is energy in motion

if you stretch a rubber band out and hold it, it has potential energy

if you let it go and it flys across the room, while it is in motion it, that is kinetic energy

Answer 3

Read your textbook in the section about energy.

Answer 4

Taichi - soft energy
Karate - hard energy

Answer 5

In the context of natural sciences, energy has different forms: thermal, chemical, electrical, radiant, nuclear etc. They can all be, in fact, reduced to kinetic energy or potential energy. Thus energy can be divided into two broad categories.


Kinetic
According to kinetic theory, the microscopic kinetic energies, ε of the particles in a gas comprise the internal energy of a system. By the equipartition theorem each degree of freedom of a particle has an associated energy, kT, such that the energy per particle is proportional to temperature. For a monatomic gas having N particles each with three degrees of freedom, the internal energy is:

where k is the Boltzmann constant and T is absolute temperature. Whereas all internal energy is kinetic in an ideal gas, in solids half of it is stored in electromagnetic potential energy between particles. Thermal internal energy is present in all macroscopic objects in the universe. Although some heat transfer is mediated by the kinetic energy of a system's constituent particles, this kinetic energy exhibits Brownian motion, a highly disorganized state.
Radiation energy, also known as light energy, is the energy of electromagnetic radiation. It is carried (in equal amounts) in electric and magnetic fields. It is quantized, and the spacing between allowed levels is called a photon. A quantum of energy of the electromagnetic field (energy of a photon) is equal to: where f is the frequency of the photon and h is the Planck's constant. Photons move at the speed of light and carry energy and momentum. Because energy or momentum can code information, photons can be used to transfer information (see fiber optics as an example).


Potential
Potential energy is stored unreleased energy (a positive quantity, like monetary savings), or else required energy (like monetary debt). This sort of energy may be positive or negative because it can represent work done on a system (against a restoring force) or work done by a system as a force result. (Negative energy is a mathematical construct in reference to another system.) For instance, using the power of a compressed spring to launch a dart uses the elastic potential energy stored within the spring. When the spring is released, this energy is converted into kinetic energy, and work is performed. There is a form of potential energy for each of the four basic forces in nature: gravity, electromagnetic, and strong and weak nuclear forces.

Gravitational potential energy is the work of gravitational force during rearrangement of mutual positions of interacting masses - say, when masses are moved apart (such as when a crate is lifted), or closer together (as when a meteorite falls to Earth). If the masses of the objects are considered point masses, this work (thus the gravitational potential energy) is equal to: where m and M are the two masses in question, r is the distance between them, and G is the Gravitational constant. In case of small displacement h << r the above formula results in widely used E = mgh approximation.
Electric potential energy is the work of electric forces during rearrangement of positions of charges, and also includes the common chemical potential energies (energy required to break chemical bonds or obtained from forming them. The energy released in lightning or from burning a litre of fuel oil, are some common kinds of electromagnetic potential energy . Electromagnetic potential energy is equal to: where q and Q are the electric charges on the objects in question, r is the distance between them, and ε0 is the Electric constant of a vacuum.
Potential thermal energy is the part of thermal energy stored in "deformation" of atomic bonds during thermal motion of atoms (as atoms oscillate around position of equilibrium they not only have kinetic energy of motion but also potential energy of displacement from equilibrium). This energy is significant portion of thermal energy for strongly bonded systems (=solids and liquids) and practically nonexistent for gasses.
Potential chemical energy is the energy stored in the bonds of chemical structures. It is released or formed in chemical reactions.
Potential elastic energy is the energy stored in the elastic nature of objects. In the ideal case, of Hooke's Law, the energy is equal to: where k is the spring constant, dependant on the individual spring, and x is the deformation of the object.
Nuclear potential energy, along with Electric potential energy, provides the energy released from nuclear fission and nuclear fusion processes. In both cases nuclear forces act to bind nuclear particles more strongly and closely, after the reaction has completed (nuclear particles like protons and neutrons are not destroyed in fission and fusion processes, but collections of them have less mass than if they were individually free). Weak nuclear forces provide the potential energy for certain kinds of radioactive decay, such as beta decay.Ultimately, the energy released in nuclear processes is so large that the change in mass is noticeable too: where Δm is the amount of rest mass released into the surroundings as active energy (heat, light, kinetic energy), and c is the speed of light in a vacuum.