what is thermal energy?

Answer 1

Thermal means "heat".
Energy means - well you must know that.
So thermal energy is energy generated from heat.

Like a steam locomotive uses heat to create steam that turns the wheels.
Or natural thermal vents (hot springs) are used to generate electricity (its a complicated explanation how they do it, but its been used for over a hundred years).

Answer 2

thermal energy is the one which is present in matter only for the fact that all matter is above absolute zero (0 Kelvin). Thermal energy is actually heat contained and present by everything. Heat and temperature are statistical concepts, there is not a temperature for an atom, you need millions of atoms for those concepts to have a meaning

Answer 3

Thermal energy has no generally agreed definition and the term will not usually be found in most dictionaries of physics or science. In everyday usage, thermal energy may be regarded either as 1. a synonym for thermodynamic energy (itself a synonym for internal energy) or as 2. a synonym for heat.

1. Seen as the internal energy of a system, there are two components to thermal energy. One component is the internal potential energy of the system - the energy the system contains at any moment due to the relative placement within the system of all its constituent parts. The second component is the internal kinetic energy of the system - the energy the system contains at any moment due to the relative motion within the system of all its constituent parts.

There may be a constant interchange within the system of internal potential energy and internal kinetic energy. However, in any thermodynamically isolated system the total thermal energy (the sum of the internal potential energy and the internal kinetic energy) remains constant.

In this context, the thermal energy of an ideal gas is only the sum of the kinetic energies of the idealised, volumeless particles which interact only with the walls of any container and not with each other so lack potential energy.

2. In the opinion of Whelan and Hodgson, authors of the classical A-level Physics reference text used for many years in the UK, thermal energy is to be preferred to "heat" when the latter is used as a noun: unless used rigorously starting from its traditional thermodynamic definition, its better to use "heat" loosely only as a verb. For example, it would be better to state that "if system A is at a higher temperature than system B, then, unless the two systems are thermally isolated from each other, thermal energy will flow from system A to system B. That is, system A will heat system B until the two systems are at the same temperature".

Answer 4

Thermal energy has no generally agreed definition and the term will not usually be found in most dictionaries of physics or science. In everyday usage, thermal energy may be regarded either as 1. a synonym for thermodynamic energy (itself a synonym for internal energy) or as 2. a synonym for heat.

1. Seen as the internal energy of a system, there are two components to thermal energy. One component is the internal potential energy of the system - the energy the system contains at any moment due to the relative placement within the system of all its constituent parts. The second component is the internal kinetic energy of the system - the energy the system contains at any moment due to the relative motion within the system of all its constituent parts.

There may be a constant interchange within the system of internal potential energy and internal kinetic energy. However, in any thermodynamically isolated system the total thermal energy (the sum of the internal potential energy and the internal kinetic energy) remains constant.

In this context, the thermal energy of an ideal gas is only the sum of the kinetic energies of the idealised, volumeless particles which interact only with the walls of any container and not with each other so lack potential energy.

2. In the opinion of Whelan and Hodgson, authors of the classical A-level Physics reference text used for many years in the UK, thermal energy is to be preferred to "heat" when the latter is used as a noun: unless used rigorously starting from its traditional thermodynamic definition, its better to use "heat" loosely only as a verb. For example, it would be better to state that "if system A is at a higher temperature than system B, then, unless the two systems are thermally isolated from each other, thermal energy will flow from system A to system B. That is, system A will heat system B until the two systems are at the same temperature".

Answer 5

The greenhouse effect is when the radiant energy passes through something transparent to it ( like glass of the atmosphere), hits the ground and gets converted into thermal energy with the radiant part being of a degraded frequency so that the glass ( and greenhouse gases, of which water vapor is overwhelmingly the most important ) is no longer transparent to it. Thus the greenhouse ( and the earth ) heats up. N.B. This is NOT an endorsement of human-caused global warming ( note the emphasis on water vapor and not CO2 ) and the fact that the effect is self-limiting ( i.e. more CO2 does not mean more opacity to reflected radiation ).

Answer 6

There are different kinds of energy: radiation, kinetic, thermal, potential, relativistic, etc. Thermal specifically pertains to statistical aggregrates, usually molecular, such as gases, liquids, solids, etc. Thermodynamics covers this type of energy, called heat. It's actually the statistical average of the kinetic energies of the individual atoms or molecules. So, for example, if I put a bottle of water in the refrigerator, thereby cooling it, I'm actually reducing the average speed of the water molecules in it. The Maxwellian distribution in thermodynamics relates heat with the distribution function of kinetic energies of the molecules. It is only in this context that the term "heat" has meaning, we never talk about the "heat" of a single particle or molecule.

Answer 7

thermal energy is heat energy

Answer 8

the energy which was produced due to buring of the coal is known as themal energy.