What happens to the energy in us, humans, when we die?

Question

energy as in the voltage going through our nervous system .... however minute it is in the great scheme of things; don't the laws of physics say energy can't be destroyed only be transferred (not the right word, i know) and nerve impulses are energy so where does it go?

Answer 1

Two things are essential for Energy in the body. The heart must work to drive the blood supply. The brain must work to provide control for the nervous system and glands. Now the food intake is converted to sugar and then to glucose which is accepted by blood. When brain stops that is death clinically. When the heart stops things go on for a while. I give you an example. Supoose a lathe machine is running and you have set auto-feed. It will continue its job since the power to drive headstock is available. Now you switch off power supply. What will happen? Due to inertia[that is body in motion will continue in motion till stopped by external force] the head stock may continue for one or two revolutions but soon because of frictional deceleration it will stop. Some thing similar is happening in the body. Once these two organs stop, all energies die down or dissipated and inaction results.

Answer 2

Voltage and energy are very different. The voltage is the potential electrical energy difference over a system. That electrical energy is produced in our body by converting chemical energy from the food we eat. When we burn this food to extract the energy and tranform it into electrical energy we also convert some into heat and some into movement etc.

Importantly, the potential energy would either remain as a potential (meaning that parts of our bodies would remain charged - unlikely) or be changed into another form (like heat). Heat is the most likely, as energy is constantly being extracted from our nervous system as a current runs through it. Yes, because our nervous system is a circuit with components in (even our nerves are components) we have resistance and, therefore, dissipate the electrical energy through heat. Unless we became superconducting, which is even less likley, any energy we had stored as potential would be expelled as heat.

Answer 3

Well, we have a lot more energy going on than nerve impulses, so I'll tlak about energy in general. We use a LOT of energy. We burn enough calories to head 90 tons of water 100 degrees Celsius in a decade. This energy is all transferred to heat energy in the end (which is why you get hot when you exert your muscles when you run, you're burning energy as both kinetic and thermal). Ultimately, all of this heat leaves your body and then leaves the atmosphere. So then if we're constantly losibng energy, where does it come from? Food. We eat food to get energy from sugars, fats and proteins. This energy ultimately comes from plants who use photosynthesis to get energy from the sun. So energy doesn't cycle on earth, since we're not a closed system like that provided in the first law of thermodynamics. Energy flows through earth since we're very open to the rest of the universe.

Answer 4

The way I would understand it is that the electricity produced is used to make bodily functions happen. For example, an electrical charge makes your heart beat, or travels to a nerve and makes a muscle flex. You could say that most of the energy generated by the human body goes into creating kinetic (movement) energy. I think most of the energy not used for bodily functions ends up in the form of heat, 98.6 degrees F. Then when you die and all of the bodily functions (movement) cease, the remaining energy is transferred to heat, and the heat ends up being transferred into the air around the body, eventually making the body grow cold.

Answer 5

Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be converted. Our body is composed of physical properties mainly chemical compounds. Certain chemical compounds hold energy or perhaps is our energy, accompanied or produced by biological processes and activity.

When we die, these energy is converted from its original state to its decomposed state. Since our bodies is made up of physical properties that are closely related to the physical properties of earth, our energy is returned and becomes a part of earth. It's really a complex cycle known as The cycle of life.

Answer 6

The ancients called it the soul while the heathens of today denies its existence. Whatever your beliefs unless you come from outer space, all our bodies are the same except for DNA variations and they are not peculiar to beliefs.
This soul or core is unknown to us all but there is ample proof of life in some form after death. For some of us who are fortunate we have been given sight of this.
I truly believe that this is the source of life ever after.
I am technically minded and always looking for reasons and I guess there are many of these but mine reason is simple.
Living a life establishes an Aurora, an attitude, and this in turn generates the nerve cells to develop an overall signature.
A calling up sign if you will, frequency or wavelength.
When we die these frequencies that we have generated immediately clump together.
We are now identified and collectively pigeon holed.
Summed up, death is a mirror image of our life on earth that will continue until the formation of our own black hole where we will enter ---?. God's heaven or the other place.

Answer 7

The electrons just stop moving, like turning off a light. It's also akin to blowing out a candle. It's true, energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can however dissipate. All of your energy is stored in your body. After death the body can be set on fire for example and then the stored energy would be released.

Answer 8

what i believe is, there is no remarkable amopunt of energy saved in our body system. it is being produced and used simultaenously in the form of ADP and ATP. when a human being dies, that process comes to halt. if there is any amount of energy remained, it will continue to flow. in this case send nerve impulse. may be because of that people seem to move even some seconds after they are supposedly dead.

Answer 9

The energy just stays there, locked up in the chemicals that make our bodies.

Nerve energy is highly transitory, and is chemical at source (there is no permanent current flow going on). Nerves only keep working because we consume and metabolise food. This stops at death.

Answer 10

It is retained as potential energy which either becomes "fuel" for the plants when we fertilise the soil after decaying or it becomes "fuel" for the furnace when we are cremated, and this in turn becomes heat energy which goes on to vibrate the air molecules around it until it becomes negligibly and undetectably small