HOW WE FOUND OUT ABOUT

ENERGY

ISAAC ASIMOV
 Contents

I. ENERGY 7
2. MECHANICAL ENERGY 12
3. HEAT 17
4 . CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 25
5. ENTROPY 30
6 . NUCLEAR ENERGY 36
7. PEOPLE AND ENERGY 44
INOEX 53
t. Energy

Evel)•body considers energy so imporla1n Lhese days lhat

you mighL 1hink the word was known even in ancient
limes. But it wasn't. The word was inverued less than
200 years ago by an English scientist named Thomas
Young. He used it for the first tfote in 1807.
Energy is something that makes it possible to do work.
and work is something tha t takes effon. Lifting a heavy
obj ect is work. So is lifting a light object, but that is less
work. Lifting an object a long dista11ce is more work than
lining it a short distance.
The heavier an object is and the further you have to
move it again st some puU, the more work yoo do.
Energy goes aJ ong wi1h work. The more work you do,
the more energy you oeed to do it with. The more energy
you have, the more work you can do.
In fact, Thomas Young made up Lhe word "energy"
from a Greek expression that means "work inside''.
Energy is something that has ",•.rork inside itu. You can
use that energy and get work out of il.
Even though ancient peopl e didn't use the word, Lhey
had the idea of energy. They knew that doing work took
effort and made you feel tired. They knew that the more

7
 so beat1tift11ly 1hat stones danced aod mo ved into a wall
by themsel ves. In The Arabian Nights, Aladdin had a
wonderful lamp that could give h i m anything he w anted.
The ge ni e of the lamp could build a castl e for him in the
twiokliog o f a.rt eye. That didn't make the genie tired
because h e used magic instead of energy.
It's no t really surprising that ()4:()ple made up thes e
tales. \r\'ork was so hard that everyone lo nged for some
way to do it without wearing a pe rson out. But no one
ever actua lly saw anything done by magic and no one
e ver did anything by magic . Any work 1.hat was ever
done 100k energy, and if peopl e did it, it took effor t and
made th em tired.
For 1he mo.s t part, yo u think of work in co nnection
with living beings. People do wo r k, and .so do animals
such as horses, donkeys, or caule. Ofien, though, objects
that have no life in them can also do work.
'fhe win d can blow ships across the water. The riv er
current can move rafts dow nstream. The tide can lift
h eavy ships. l f a catapult is r el e.ased, its ]ever mo ves and
a heavy stone is thrown into the a ir. That hea vy stone
can hh a wall and sma.."ih iL
'Whenever so me thing that is not ali,,e does work, it is
work you did, the greater the effort and the more tired because it is io motio n. Still air, still water, still rocks
you got. don't move anything o r smash anything . 11 is mo ving air,
moving water, moving rocks that do the work.
If they had known the word, they might have said
''You only have so much tnugy in your bod y . The mor� Since motion does work1 motion must be a kind of
work you do, the more energy you use up and th e more energy. \'Ve could call it "mo tion energy", but in )856,
tired you foeI." an English scie1njst named Lord Kelvin called it "kinetic
\Vhat the ancient people didn't realise was that en ergy". That's really the same 1hing, fo r "kinetic" is
maki ng use of energy was the only way of doing work. f rom a Greek word meaning "motio n".
They thought there were strange powers 1..hat could do The faster an object moves, the more work it can
work without an effort an d without getting tired. do, and the more energy it must therefore have. If you
The ancient Greeks told tale."i of musicians who played m:.tke a h ammer mo ve slo wly, it wiJljust tap .a nail and

9
8
 push it imo wood only a littl e way. Jfyou move 1ha1 same it )antis, because it had a great deal of pote,uial energy 10
h ammer more rapidly, it hi1.s the nail harder and drives it start with.
further into the wood. You probably know from your own experience that
Vlc can also see that a heav ier, or "more massive.., you can get hurt more when you j ump from a high waU
objecl has more kinetic energy than a less massive one than ; from a low one. From a high wall, you hit the
moving at the same speed. A large, heav)' hammer will ground harder.
drive a nail further in with each blow than a small Ught The ancient people would have been puzzled if a nyone
ham mer wi.11 al the same speed. had spoken to them of kinetic energy or of potential
S0me1imes even a motionless object can become cap� energ-,. ' . T hey didn11 kr)ow the words. Still, they had lhe
able of doing work Imagine a rock sitting on the edge of nolion. They built ships with sails to take advantage of the
a diff. If a gus1 of wind blows it off it starts falling. It win d'.s energy. They let the running water of a river turn
starts mo ving downwards, in other words, and that wheels tha1 then did work for them. They knew perfectly
means it suddcnl) ' has kinetic energy. As something faHs, well that a rock dropping from a height could do
it moves faster and faster, so that it gains more and more damage.1 and that a person jumping from a height might
kinetic energy. Finally il hi1s the ground, and it can do hit the ground hard enoug h lO break a leg or even be
work as it hits-smash some1hing> for instance. killed.
The rock doesn't seem to ha ve any energy when it is just Just the same, having a r\ollon isn't enough. If you
sitting a, 1he edge of the cliff. It doesn't do any work. But wa.01 to understand energy properly, you have to study it
it can g'ain kinetic energy when it falls off the diff. \,\fe carefully. You have 10 make exact measurements and
can say that the rock at the edge of 1he cliff has energy nolicc how those measurements fit toge ther.
1
that is just waiting for the right c-.onditions to show up. The ancients wercn 1 able to make the kind of careful
In 1853, a Scottish engineer named 'William J.M. measurements that were need ed to develop a real under­
Rankine caHed the eJ1ergy of anything that could Slarl standing of energy. That didn't come until modem
falling "polenlial en ergy". 1jmes.
The higher an object is above the ground, the longer
the distance iL can faJJ and the greater it� potential
energy. After all, an object falling only a short distance
doesn't have a ch ance to speed up very much and to gain
much kinetic energy. It lands with only a small th ump
and c a.n do ver y little work. The object had liule
potential energy to start with.
An object fallin.g from a great height has a chance. 10
gain a great deal of speed and therefore a great dea l of
kinetic energy. It can then do a great deal of work \Vhen

IO 11
2. Mechanical
falls, you also know LhaL iL keeps gaining more and more
kinetic energy. In Galileo's time, scientists stiU didn't
have a clear idea of kinetic energy. Eventually, they

energy learned about kinetic energy and l.hen they were able to
use Galileo's formulae.

l
Ycars before he cx�rimented with rolling and falling
baUs, Galileo had made a different discovery. In 1581,
when he was only l 7. he was attending religious services
in a cathedral when he noticed a chandelier swinging in

I
the draughts of wind.
Sometimes it swung back and forth just a little way;
sometimes a long way, according to how the gusts
of wind caught it. It always took the same time to go
from end 10 end of its swing, though, whether it swung
through a small distance or a large one. (Galileo timed il
Since motion is a kiod of e.oerg-y, )'Ou might begin LO find by mear1s of his pulse, and he was so busy counting Lhat
out about energy if you studied motion carefully. The he must have missed hearing the sc::rvicc.)
first person to study motion carefully was an Italian In this way, Galileo discovered the way a pendulum
scientist named Gali leo Galilei. He is usually known works. Pendulums keep time in their swings so well that
by his first name only: Galileo. about 70 years later they were used to bui ld "grandfather
In the 1590s, Galileo experimented by letting balls roll clocks''. These were the first accurate clocks ever
down slanted grooves and measuring the distance they invented.
rolled in a given time. Accurate clocks hadn't bee1ll
iove,nted yet, so he Limed the rolling by counting the I
l
Suppose you want to find out how a pendulum works.
You could make one for yourself. Tle a piece of string to
drops of water that leaked out of a can with a hole in Lhe anylhing that's above the ground; a showcr C · urtain rod,
bottom. for instance. Then tie something fairly heavy to the other
He was the first to show 1hat balls moved faster and end; a pocket.knife, for instanoc. Then let it swing.
faster as they rolled down an inclined plane. He was able It goes to one side, then to Lhe other, back and forth,
to work out rwo simple mathemacical formulae that over and over. As il goes up on one side it moves more
could be used to calculate how fast an objec1 would be· and more slowly, until it comes LO the top of its swing.
moving after it had dropped for a certain length of time l There it stops moving for an instant. Then it begins to
down an inc.lined plane. You could also use these move back down, faster and faster. By the Lime it reaches
formulae LO cakulaLe Lhe d istance it had fallen. the bottom of the swing, il is moving quite quickly. The1)
If you know that a ball moves faster and faster as it it begins to move up in the other direction, and 110w it

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Galileo's experiment with rolling balls down an inclineil plane

moves more and more slowly again. loses potential cnergy�ver and over again. The two
As the pendulum rises on one side and moves more kinds or en ergy keep changing one into the Other, back
•nd more slowly, it has less and less kinetic energy. Since and forth. back and forth.
it ls tising higher as it does so, it has more and more The w�rking or a pen dulum '"as one of the first
potential energy. By the time it reaches Lhe top of its observations that gave scientists the notion that different
swing, it has no kinetic energy at all because it isn 't kinds of energy could be easily changed back and forth.
moving. It has the most potential energy il ever has, What's more, you can see that as the energy switches
t.hough, because it is then as high as it ever gets and has back and forth from one kind to a11other, the total doesn 't
the potential of falling. increase. The pendulum always goes up to the same
\<Vhen the pendulum comes down again1 it stans height on each side of the swing.
gaining kinetic energy again as il ,noves faster and f�ter. Eventually, in fact, scientists learned how to calculate
At t.he same time it loses potential energy because it exactly how much kinetic enel'gy and how much
moves lower and lower. At the bouom of the swing, it is potential energy a pendulum had al each p oint in its
moving fastest and has most kinetic energy, and it is at swing. They found that the kinetic energ)• plus the
its lowest point and has least potential energy. potential energy was always the same. The .amount of
As a pendulum swings, first it loses kinetic energy a1\d cad\ kind of energy was constantl y challging, but the total
gaios pOlential energy, then it gains kinetic energy and amount of en ergy was not.

14 15
 3. Heat
Kinetic energy and poternial energy are lumped
together a s 0mtchanical energy". That is because in
machines there are.always moving paru; that move raster •
and slower, higher and lower. In machines, kinelic
ene� is often turning into potential energy, and bac.k
again.
For a pendulum, then> we can s.ay that the k.ineLic
energy and the potenLial energy are always changing in
amounts. The total amount of mechanical energy,
ho wtver> always r('mains the same.
or
When the total q .uantity something doesn't change
as objects arc moving and shifting about, that something
is said 10 be "conserved". In a pendulum, then, there is
..conservation of mechanical energy". Throughout tht 1600s and 1700s, scicntislS kept arguiog
Suppose this doeso't 011Jy happen with a pendulum? about motion and energy and rlever got 1he law of
Suppose :.my object that experiences changes in kinetic ' conservation of mechanical energy quite cle.ar. The chief
and potential energy al ways keeps the same amount of trouble was that the law of conservation of mechanical
mechanical el\ergy. \Ve would the.n say this was a energy didn't really work. 11 wasn't a true natural law.
"natural la w". \Ve would say the pendul um behaved as If you let a pendulum s,\fing fot a long timt, ii will
it did because of the "law of conservation of mechanical make .s maller and smaller s wings, and eventually it will
ene.rgy". stop. The bouncing glass marble will make smaller and
Herc i s another common example of this law: smaller bounces until it is ju sl lying on the ground. In
Suppose you dropped a glass marble on a smooth tile othe, · words, the total mechanical energy always gets ltSJ.
Aoor. It will gain kinetic energy and lose potential energ)' Sometimes it gets less only very slowly, sometimes il gelS
as. it drops. But then it will hit the Aoor and bounce. It less very rapi dly -huf if alwayr gLls ftss.
will move upwards, losing kinetic energy and gaining Suppose you shove a "'ooden object across a waxed
potential energy as it rises. Ir it rises to the same point ,,.rooden floor. The object slides along, but the floor is
from which you let it drop, the total mechanical energy level so that the object never changes its height. It never
has not changed. In fact, 1hc total mechanical energy has increases its potencial energy. lf the law of conservation
remained the same at every point in the fall and in the or mechanical energy was right, then the object oou ld
b ou nce back. never decrease its kinetic energy. it would have 10 keep
\Ve could say, the bouncing glass marble also shows sliding a long forever at lhe samt speed.
the workings of the law or conservation of mechanital B ut that's rlOl the way it works. The woode1l object
energy. slows down as it slides. finally, it c.-orncs to a hall.

16 17
 No mauer whal we do, mechanical energy is never you can start a fire. Oc>es heat have some connectio1\ with
conserved. It always changes, and il always changes in energy?
�
the same direcdon. Il always gets less. In the J700s, many scientists thought heat was a kind
The reason mechanical energy gets less is because of of s ubstanc:e that they called "c:aloric" from a Latin word
"friction''-that is, the rubbing or one object against for "heat". They thought tha1 caloric could Aow easily
another. A ,,,ooden obje<:t lrave ls only a short way over a from one object to another: a hot object contained a great
rough wooden Aoor before it comes to a hah. The rough deal of caloric, and when it was put near a C()ld one, some
wooden Aoor produces lots or fricllon, and the sliding of the caloric Aowed from the hot object to the cold; the
object uses up all its kinetic energy overcoming the hot object cooled off and the cold objecl wanned up.
friction. Thal seemed to make sens�but suppose yo1.,1 start
If it was moving over a smooth wooden floor, the with two objeccs that are bo1h cool. Neither has much
wooden object would slide a longer distance before caloric, but if you rub them together, both grow warm
stop �ing. h ,\lould slide stiU further if il was moving and contain more ca.Jorie. Where did the extra caloric
over 1cc. come from?
A pendulum has to rub against the air as it swings. One person who puzzled over this question was ao
This rubbing is called "air resis1ance.. and ii is a kind of America.o named Benjamin Thompson. At the time of
friclion LC)(). Then, too, the string used to attach the the American Revolution, he left Americ.a aod ,1ever
pendulum to something rubs aga.inst whatever it is returned. In Europe, he was made a noble and was
attached to. known as Count Rumford.
If we could imagine a world without friction, then In l 798, Count Rumford was in Germany wh,ere he
mechanical energy would be conserved. Imagine a pendu· was supervising the manufacture of cannoos. In order to
)um swinging in a place where there is nothing al all, nol make a ca.nno,1, you begin wilh a block of metal and bore
even air (a "vacuum"). If there was no friction at the a long hole into it. The hole is gou ged oul with a :sharp,
string's end, it would then !wing forever. An objec.::1 rotating piece of a harder kind of mclal.
sliding in a vacuum along a perfectly smooth floor would Naturally, as you gouge out 1he hole, there is a. lol of
travel forever. rriction belween the rotating piece of metal and the block
In the real world, though, friction dots exist. That of metal into which the hole is being bored. Both pieces
means that mechanical energy is always disappearing. of metal gel very hot and have to be kept cool by pouring
·where does ii go? Ooes it disappear into nothing at all? cold water over them all the time.
Or does it change into sorne1hi11g e lse.-imo another Rumford thought about this and wondered where all
form of enerS)', perhaps? the heat was coming from. Some scitnt ist.S thouglu that
One thing thal friction produces is heat. If you rub when pieces of metal Aaked off from the cannon .as the
your hands you make them warm. If you rub t,•.ro sticks hole was formed, the caloric in the metal was released
t.ogeiher in Lhe right way, you can make them so hot that and poured out. But how much caloric oould there be?

18 19
All the meLal was cold lO start with, and yet as the boring 111ennometer
continu ed, the metal could be made hot enough to boil
endless amounts of ,�ater.
Rumford tried u sing a dull piece o f metal to do the
boring. That didn't cut off any pieces of metal, so no
caloric could get loose. Did this mean that the metal Celsius · Fahrenhett
wouldn't get hot? No! II did gel hot and even faster. Hea1 S<I 120
j ust poured ouL of those metals for as long as he kept
110
boring.
Rumford thought that heat might be a kind ofmolion.
•o 100
The motion of the burning bore, ordinary kinetic motion, 90
was tu rning into another kind of motion 1ha1 was heat. JO
80
Heat wasn't Lhe motion of an entire object, Rumford
thought. It was the motion of all the tiny liule pieces of 20 70
which the object was composed. These tiny little pieces 60
were so small you couldn't see them, and they moved 50
through such tiny distances that y:>u couldn't sec the
40 '
monon.
\Vha1's more, they moved in all directions, back and 0 JO '
forth. All the motions in all the different directions 20
cancelled out, and the whole object didn't move. 10
According to Rumford's notion, when friction causes
an object to s1op swi11ging, bouncing, or sliding, its 0
kinetic energy has noc disappeared. l ts kinetic energy has -10
ju �t shifted from the whoJe object to all the lilde pans
-20
that make i, up, and all the little parts of whatever ii rubs
against. -JO
\Vhen Rumford first suggested this, very few scientists
believed him. How could there be parts of an object so -50
small you couldn't see them, moving in all directions
through such tiny distances you couldn't see the motion? ,.
It sourlded silly. ..
.. .
In 1803, however, only 5 years after Rumford's cxperi·
ments, an English chemist, John Dalton, came up with

20 21
another idea. He showed that a grc.at man)' things By the 1800s, very good thermometers had been i1ivented
scie1His1.s were hnding ou1 could be easily explained if to measure temperat ure, and they were very useful to
you supposed that ever�1hing was made up of 1iny liLLle scientists who were interested in energy.
parts tha1 he called "atoms". Once heat was Jooked at as a kind of kinetic energy,
Atoms were far too small to sec, bul the concept of scientists could take another look al the law of conserva­
atoms became so useful to scientists that more and more tion of mechanical energy. The reason it didn't work was
of them began to believe that atoms reall y exisL thal some of the· mechanical energy was always being
Sci e,uists worked out careful experiments to find out <:hanged into heat> which is <mother form of energy.
what atoms arc like. As the years ,,,.ent on. they learned Instead of jusl saying that kineLic energy can t urn to
more and more about t!1e tiny <Homs. l t began to make polencial energy 3nd vice versa, we can say that any form
more and more sense co suppose that heat was made up of energy earl turn into any other kind of energy.
of the tiny motions of these tiny atoms. The fas,er the for instance> ordinary kinetic energy can turn 10 heat.
atoms moved in aJI directions in any substance, 1he Also, heat can t urn to ordinary kineLic energy; for
honer that substance was. example. when the hot steam in a keule makes the cover
You can tell how hot a substance is by measuring its move up and down.
temperature with an instrument e,"lllcd a 1hermometcr. There are other forms of energy. Light, sound,

Dry cell battery

•
'"'<;-<-

22 23
electricity, magnetism can all do work and are all
forms of energy. They can be changed back a nd forthM
Electricity can produce light in an electric bulb or
4. Conservation of
sound in an electric bell. Electricity can produce
magnetism. Ma gnetism can produce cleclricity. Heat,.
energy
light, and motion can each produce electricity.
Chemicals can produce sound and kinetic energy
when they explode, or light and heat when they bum, so
there is "chemical energy", 100. Also, light, heat and
kinetic energy can produce certain chemical changes and
thus become chemical en ergy.
By the middle 1800s, it was clear that scientists could
make sense o f energy only if they consid ered it in all its
fonns.
A big question r cmains. If we take all the kinds of energy
there are in the world, and add them up, is t.he total
always the same? In changing energy from one form to
anolher, does a.iy of it ever disappear altogether? Does
a ny of it appear out of nothing?
A German sc::ientist named Julius Robert Mayer was
the first to consider this question. He was a ship's doctor,
travelling to dist:ant lands, and he had considerable time
to stan thinking- about the subject.
It occurred to him tha t if people could measure the
wa)' in which kinetic energy turned to potential energy
and back again., they could also mea sure the way in
which mechanic.al energy turned to heat. fo 1840, as an
experiment, he had a horse pull away at a machine that
stirred a thick m..ixture in a large pot.. He cakulated how
much energy tbe horse put out and how much hea t
appeared in the mixtur e .
In measuring how much mechanical energy created a
particula r amou�t ofhca1, he me�ured something called

24 25
"the mechanicaJ equivalent of heat''. In 1842, he wrote a was t hat there is a ''law of con se rvation of energy".
paper in which he explained this. Mayer had a great dcaJ of trouble getting people to
He abo went on to say that h e thought any kind of pay auention to his theories. Most peo ple who read the
eoergy could be transformed in to an y othet, but that the paper at aUjust put it aside and forgot about ll. After all,
total enc:rgy always remained the same. He thought this how could anyo ne kno w just how mu c:h energy of
included even the energy ofJivin g things. sunligh1 went into the wind and into coal, and so on? It
According to Mayer's theory, we could suppose that seemed to them 1hat Mayer just had a very lively
the energy of sunlight is tran�formed into the ch emical imagination.
energy of f ood inside green plants. \Vhen animals eat the Poor Mayer wa s so de pressed abou t the way in which
food of green plants, this chemicaJ ene rgy ls changed into peo ple ignored his sci entific contributions and about
the chemical ene rgy in animals. various family troubles that in 1849 he tried to kill
May er thought t.hat the energy of sunlight evaporated hirn$eJf by jumping out of a third-storey window. He just
some of the water in the ocean and that this ,,apour hurt his legs, buc he was put into a mental i n stitution for
finally fell as r ain, which coll ected in r ivers. The energy a whiJe. Finally, he was reJeased, but he did no more
of sunlight was thus transformed into the energy of scientific work.
running wat er . In the 1860s, however, the scientific world came to
The energy of sunlight also heated up some pans of realise the value of Mayer's work, and everyone began to
the ocean and the air ·more than other parts. The hot prai se him. In 187 J, he received the Copley medal, one of
paru rose and the cold parts moved in to take their place. the h ighest honours a scientist cou ld get in those days.
In this way, the energy of sunlight was cransformcd into One of the reasooi that May e r had received so liule
the energy of wind and of ocean currents. attention was that he had done only one experiment. He
Plants that gained their energy from the Sun some ­ had only done the experiment with the horse stirring
times decayed in such a way as to form coal. We can now the thick mixt ure.
dig up coal that was formed hundred, of millions of years An English scientist. James Prescott Joule,
ago. It� chemical energy comes from the sunl ght of that
i approached the problem in a dilferent way .
period. When we bum the co al, that c.hemical energy . He had had a sickly childhood, but he was the son of a
turns in to light and hea.t. rich bre wer, whose beer was s elling very well. Joule
Tiny se.'\-animals sometimes die and decay in such a "" was privately educated and he was allo wed to fix up a
way as to fonn petroreum. The energy of petrole um home laboratory for himself.
comes f rom the plants those tiny s ea- animals ate, a 1 \d He became very int erested in measuring thin gs, and
therefore from sunlight. through the I840s, he worked at measuring exactly ho w
Suppose energy can shift from one form to another but much h eat was formed when a certain amoun, of a
never changes it� total quantity. In that case., energy is particular kind of energy was used. He tried almo$l e very
conserved. \Vhat Mayer was maintaining in hi� paper form of energy he could think of.

26 27
 He churned water witlh paddles, for instance. Then he printed, a German scientist, Hermann L.F. vo n
churned mercury with paddles. He forced water through Helmholtz, had co me to the conclusion that energy
small holes to heat ii by friction. He let gases expand and was conserved. In 1847; he w rote a paper explaining
then squeezed them again. He passed electric c-ur renlS his ideas.
through various objects to heat them up. Helmholtz was a professorI but he too had trouble
He was so fascinated by such measuremen1s that he g etting his paper printed. In the end, he did. His clear
was even busy wi1h them on his honeymoon. He made explanation and Joule's measurements finarny won out.
himself a special thermometer and used it to measure the Thr� men together1 Mayer, Joule, and Hel mholtz, all
temperature of the water at the top and bottom of a working in the 184-0s, established the law ofoonsen1ation
waterfaJJ his new wife and h e visit ed. He wanted to know of energy, w hich states that energy may change from one
if the energy of the faJling waterfaU wa.s turned into heat form to another, but that th e total amount in the
at the bottom end and, if so, ho w much heat was Universe is always the same.
produced. There is a special branch of science that de.als with the
By 1847, 5 years after 1'.•layer's paper, Joule had way en ergy is transfonned from one rorm to another,
satisfied himself that the same amount of energy, no how all forms of energy can be cransformed t.o heat, and
mauer w hat kind it was, always ended up as the same how he-at moves from one place to another. It is called
a mount of heat. He had measured, much mo re exactly "thermodynamics" from Greek words meaning "heat·
than Mayer had, the mechanical equivalent of heat. mov ement".
\'\'hat's more, if energy was 1ransformed from o ne kind Everything in that science depends on the law of
to another without gaining or losing, th en that filled in conservation of energy, more than on anything else. For
with the Jaw of conservation of energy. that reason, the law of conservation of energy is some•
Joule wrote up all his findings in a paper and tried to times caUed "the first law of thermodynamics".
get it printed. However, he was not a professional It's even more than that. Scientists usually consider
scientist. He was just a rich brewer (his father had died the law of conservation of energy to be the most
by then, and Joule was running the brewery). Sdentist.S important of all the rules that describe how the
weren't sure if they could take him seriously, so they Universe works.
refused to print his paper. Once peopl e understood the law of conservation of
Joule had a brother who worked on a newspaper, energy, they realised there was no use expecting magic to
however. He got his bro,ther to persuade the newspaper w ork. How could stones dance into a wall, or a flying
to print his entire paper. That gave some people a chance carpel go 1hrough the air> or a palace DC built by
to read it. Then, when he made a speech about it, some making magic passes in the air? \Vhere would the energy
scientists became int erested. In a couple of years, every· come fro m?
one was takingJoule's work quite seriously.
About the time that Joule was gett ing his paper

28 29
5. Entropy The steam engine had beeo invented over 50 years
before Carnot's time, bu1 although it had been improved,
it stm worked "ery poorly. The energy started in the
burning wood or coal that bo iled the water. It ended in
the work bdng done. But only about 5 per cem of the
original energy of the burning wood or coal ended in
work. The other 95 per cent was wasted in heating up the
surroundings and did no work.
Carnot w.l.$ interested in seeing whether there was an}'
way of improving thjs, He pretended that a steam engine
could be made perfeclly so that it lost no heat at all.
When he did that, his mathematic s showed that even
Suppose you had a supply of energy. Would ,ha< be all then you could never turn all the heat into work.
you needed lO do any a.mount of work? AfLer all, Lhe law In the steam engine there is steam at a high temper a �
o f con..scrvation of energy says it can't be destroyed. You ture in the boiler and water at a low temperature in a
would: just change it from one form ofenergy to another cooling chamber. The water is first healed to steam by
and then to another and then back to the first burning fuel, then the steam is changed back to liquid
perhaps, and so on forever. And with eac.11 change, you water in the coo ling chamber.
could just ke,cp on geuing work out ofit. Or could you? Carnot showed Lhal th� amount of energy that could
le turns out that you can11. Energy never disappears, be turned into work depended upon the diffartnce in the
but no1 all of it can be turned into work. two tcmpcn)tures. The greater the difference, the more of
The first person who saw this point was a French the energy (but never aJI ofit) could be turned into work.
scientist named Nicolas L.S. Carnot. He did his work in The smaller the difference, the Jess of the energy could be
1824, long before the law of conservation of energy was turned into work. If the entire steam engine w� at the
finally worked out. Carnot wasn't trying to check same temperature, so that there were no differences, then
whether that law exis1ed. He was interested in a smaller no matter how hoL lhe Sleam engine was, n"11e of the
problem. By 1824, s1cam engines were being used for energy could be turned in to work. If you were to try this
more and more purposes. In steam engines, water is by experiment, you would find it to be true.
healed lO boiling, and the steam that is produced Unfortunately, Carnol died ,.,.hile he was still a young
collects in a chamber. As more and more steam gets man, only a few year s after he did this ,,.rork and for a
into lhe chamber, it builds up strong pressures. \Vhcn while it was not followed up.
the steam is alJowed to puff out of the chamber it does By 1850, however, Carnot's work began to seem very
so with such a push that it can move rods, tum wheels, interesting. A German scientist, RudolfJ.E. Clausius,
and thus do work. began to consider the idea.

30 31
Steam engine He didn't deal just wilh the heat in a steam engine and
Intake stroke its different le1nperatures. He considered all kindi. of
energies� and he studied all kinds of work. (Clausius was
the first scientist to define the word ..work'' carefully, so
that it could be used properly in mathema1icaJ
formulae.)
Clausius showed that the only Lirne you oould tum
energy into work w.u; when the energy supply you were
using was not evenly spread oul. Whene,,er you had
some device in which a lot o f some kind of energy was
Boil er presem i n one part and only a liule in another part, then
you coul,d get work out of it.

'
Water at low
temperature •••• As you got work out of such a device, the energy began
to even out. As the energy evened out, you got less and
less wor:k out of it. Finally, when the energy was all
evened out, you could get no more work oul of the device.
The onlr way you could make Lhat device continue to do
work would be to force some of the energy back into one
part, leaving the rest wiLh only a litlle energy.
In a wi nd-up dock, for instance, a lot of energy is
present in the spring. This energy-filled spring docs work
Power stroke by Lurnimg the hands of the clock. As it does lhe work,
though, the spriog unwinds. Finally, il has no more
energy than any other pan of the clock, and Lhe clock

-
stops. It will only go if you wind it up again.
Clausius worked out a mathematical expression that
represented the amount by which the energy had evened
. out. He called this amou1u "entropy". The more energy

·-
CI•
••••
,,
evens out in some device, the higher its entropy. When
the energy evens out aJtogether, so that all pans of a
device have the same energy level, its entropy is at a
ma:omum.
Clausius poimed out in J 852 that entropy is always
'
inc.reasiog-; energy is always evening out. Even if you can
32
33
 Spring Wound reverse the process and make eoergy become uneve11
again, it takes energy to do that. It takes energ)' to wind
l• P a clock, for insta11ce.
\rVhatever is done to concentrate energy in one pl:.'tcc
and decrease entropy there, it always increases entropy
in another place--in your own body, ifyou are windin..g
1he clock. The entropy increase in one pl ace is always
fo\md to be greater than the entropy decrease in another.
If you include everything, then entropy is always going
up.
Jn that casc1 is everything on Earth running down like.
a clock? The Earl.h's entropy is increasing. Then why
hasn't everything on Earth run down by now?
The answer is that everything on Earth is always being
wound up again by the energy of sunlight, so that for
thousands of millions of years, Earth has been foll of the
kind ofenergy-unevenness th,u can be Lurned into work.
But then1 is the Sun running down? Clausius thought
Unwound it had to b e . The Sun and all Lhe stars are running down)
and finally, a Long time from now, everything in the
Universe will be aU run down. Entropy in the whoJc
Universe will be at a maximum, and no more work will
be possible.
The notion of how energy is always evening out, so
that Jess and less c-an be turned into work, is another very
important rule in thermodynamics. It is not quite as
imponant as the law of conservation of energy> but
almost.
If the law of conservation of energy is the first law of
thermodynamics, the rule that entropy al11,•ays increruscs
and that everything s always running down can be
i
caUcd "the second law ofthermodynamics...

34
 Cross-section of a volcano
6. Nuclear energy

Ooce the law of conservation of energy was worked out,

aU the energy problems on EarLh could be ex-plained. It
could be seen how all the forms of energy could be
transformed back and forth) and where they all c::ame
from.
Some energy, like t..he energy of volcanoes and earth·
quakes, came from the heat deep inside the Earth. Some,
like the energy of the ocean 1ides, came from the energy
oft..he Earth•s rotation.
Al most aU forms of energy we meet with o n Earth,
however, can be traced back to lhe energy of imnlight.
The Sun has been shini ng exactly as it does now for all
the thoosands of years of human history on Earth. h
must have been shining exactly as it does now for many,
many millions of years before human civilisation began.
\\'here did all that energy come from?
Could the law of conservation of energy be true Orll)'
for the Earth? Could the Sun's energy come from
1\owhere?
Hclmho1tz, one of Lhe three men who worked out the
law of conservaLion of energy, began to thi nk abo ut this
in 1854. He thought the Sun's energy had to come from

36 3;
somewhere. The Sun couldn'l be burning like a huge Cross-section of the Sun
bonfire. Ordinary chemical energy would only k�p it
going for 1,500 years at most.
Helmholtz wondered if meleors might be falling COO·
staruJy i,no the Sun. The k inetic energy of their moticn
might be the source of t..he Sun's energy. This d idn't
work, lhough. If that was the case, the Sun would gtt
more and more massive and its pull on Earlh would gu
stronger. The Earth would move faster and faster about
the Sun- and it doesn't.
Then Helmholtz wondered if the Sun might be slowly
shrinking. All the parts of the Sun might be falling
towards the centre. The kinet-ic energy of that fall coid
be the source of the Sun's enel'gy. If 1hat was true, tke
Sun's mass wouldn't change.
For the rest of lhe 1800s, it seemed to man)' scientists
that shrinking was the answer to the question of tkc
Sun's energy. Other sc.ient ists, however, were uohappy
about the notion.
Suppose the energy coming from t.he Sun did cone
from the shrinking o f the Sun. lo ,hat case, less than a
hundred million years ago, the Surl must have been so
big t.hat the Earth, if it moved about the Sun at i(s
present distance, would have been in.side the Sun. The
Earth couldn't have formed until the Sun had shrunk
enough to make room for il lO move about c>uLSide the
Sun.
This meant the Eart.h would have to be less than a
hundred million years old. Scientists who studied the
Earth's Slruct.ure, however, were sure that t-his couldn't
be s o . The Earth had to be much older than a hundrtd
million years.
Then, in 18961 a French scient.ist, Antoine Hetri
Becquerel, fouod t.hat a ra1her rare metal, uranium, w15

38
39
 released. It is this energy, invol ving electrons, that
''radi�ctivc'"._ that is, it was always giving oiT tiny
spcedmg parucles, much smaller than atoms, with a is «chemical energy".
great deal or kineLie energy. It also gave off a form of When the protons and neutrons of an atomic n ucleus
energy something like light. are rearranged, energy is al so released. This energy,
In L 900, a New Zealand-born Briti$h scientist, Erne st involving the nucleus, is ''nuclear energy".
There is m uch more nuclear energy than there is
Rutherford. figured out how mu ch energy was give n off.
He calculated it for a parLicular radioactive metal chemical energy. A ctrtain number of atoms shifting the
particles in the nt1cl eu s will deliver many, many times as
radium, which gave off more energy in this way than an;
substai nce known before. He showed that a gramme of much energy as that same number of atoms shifting their
radium would give orrenough energy every hour to heat electrons in their out er section$.
Now, at la.st, there seemed a new route by which to
a gramme of freezing cold water to its boiling point. In
discover the SO\arce of thC Sun's tremendou s, continuous
the next hour it would do the same= and in the next, .ind
so on, .for many hundreds of years. energy.
In L924, an English astronomcr1 Arthur Stanley
\Vhere was the energy coming from? \Vas the law of
Eddington, worked out what the material at the Sun's
conservation of energy wrong? Rutherford thou.ght not.
centre must be like. He showed that ii would have 10 be
He suspected there was some form of energy inside the
atom$ that scientisu; did not know existed. very hot. It would have to have a temperature of millions
Rutherford experimented with the speeding parlides of degrees.
that shot out of the radioactive atoms. He let them pass Then in 1929, an American astronomer, Henry Norris
Russell. analysed sunligh1 in such a way as to be able 10
throug h ordinary atoms and they seemed to pass through
show that the Sun con$iStt.:d mostly of a su bstance called·
as though there was nothing there. Every once in a whi1e 1
hydrogen.
though, one of the particles hi1 something and bounced
Using such inrorma1j o1\, a German-American scien­
back.
tist, Hans Albrecht Bethe, tried to work out what kind of
By 1911, Rutherford was able to announce that
nuclear ch3ngc.s might be going 011 ill the centre of the
atoms were made up mostly of empty space. Throughout
Sun. In 1938, he showed that the Su n's energy had to
most of the atom's structure, there were only occasional
come from lhc fusion of two hydrogen atoms to form one
very light particles called ''electrons". At the verv centre
helium atom. This is call ed "nuclear fusion"'.
of the atom though, there was a tinyI massive region that
Scientists now agree that the Sun is changing
Ruthe.Mord called the "atomic nu cleus••.
hydrogen nuclei to heli um nuclei, and there is
Scie,uists went on 10 study the atomic nudeus and
enough hy drogen in the Sun to account for its having
found that it was made up of particles called "proto1u"
shone throu gh all the 5:000 million years that the £3r1h
and ..n eutr<.ms". Atoms 3re joined co each other bv
has existed.
means or the electrons in their outer portions. \r\lhe;1
Of course, some day, 1he Sun's hy droge.n will be used
atoms arc pulled apart and rearranged, energy is
41
4-0
Hydrogen fusing to form helium up, bu1 that won't be for at least 81000 million years
more.
The nuclear fusion that produces the Sun•s energy also
produces the energy of aH the other stars. The law of
conserva1ion ofenergy is true no1 only on Earth but all
over the Universe.
Arc there still othe1· kinds of energy that are even
greater than nudear energy? Scientists c;an't say that
there aren't, but since 19001 they haven't found any new
kinds of energy they don't already know something
about.

42 43
7. People and In Great Britain, the wood shortage was severe, and it
was here that a sudden new a11d greater need for fuel

energy
arose. During the 1700s., the steam engine was invented.
For the first time, the chemical energy of fuel was
converted into the kinetic energ)' of moving rods and
turning wheels that made things move.
More and more steam engines were built aod used to
run machines in factories and move ships across the
water and locomotives over land. As a resuJt, 1here was a
great change in people's lives. This period was called the
"Industrial Revolution'�.
There just wasn't enough wood in the worl d to supply
the energy needed to keep all those steam engines going.
In the 1700:s, Great Br-it.ain began to use coal instead,
far back in early cave dweller days, Lhe only energy because it was a more plentiful fuel.
human beings used w� Lhe chemical energy of their own More and more coal was used throughout the 1800s.
bodies. Of course1 very little new c-0al is being formed, so that
As human beings gained more knowledge and learned o nce the coal t.hat is in the ground gets used up, there
new ""'ays of doing things, Lhey used the energy of their \'IIOn't be ally more. Still., lhere are millions of millions of
tame ,animals. They also used water currents atld wind to tonnes of coal in the ground all over the world. That
move their ships. is eoough to last for hul\dreds of )'ears.
long, long ago, the)' Jearned how to use the energy of People have learned new ways ofusing (:Oergy. In the
fires, burning wood or fat for fuel. .Fire was used for more 1800s, the chemical energy of burnillg fuel was used to
and more things as time we1n on. It was used to warm turn wheels between the poles of a magnet. It was found
people i n the winter. It was al so used to give light at lhat the energy of molion past the magnet was changed
night� It was used to cook food, to make metals, glass, imo the energy of an electric currem. Electri c currents
aod pottery. were used for telegraphs and telephones and for every
As fire was used more and more, more and more wood kind of electric motor to do work for human bei ngs.
had to be used for fuel. For a loog time. it didn't matter All this electrical power was made possible by
becau.se every year more trees grew and that made up for burning more and more coaJ.
the wood that human beings used. It is hard to dig up coal, however, and hard to ge1 it
But by the 1700s, so much wood was being used that from the mines to the factories. In the 1800s, people
in some places trees didn't grow fast enough to make up learned how to drill oil wells. Oil is a liquid, 1101 a solid
for what was being burned. like coal. It is easier to get oil out of the ground than 10

'15
 get coal. h is also a lot easier to move oi l from pJace to Fission chain reaction
plate through pipes. Oil is also a lot ca.sier to burn.
Towards 1.he end of the 1800s> new kinds of engines 1 neutron
were invented that burned pc1rol. Such engines are
called "imerllal combustion engines" and these are used
in automobiles, trucks, buses, ships and aeroplanes. The
petrol they use comes from oil.
Throughout the first halfof the 1900s, more and more
of these engines were used and more and more oil wa..'I
being burned. Oil was being used instead of coal to heat
houses a1 1d to produce electricity. By 1950, more oil was
being burned than coal
The 1rouble is 1 though, that there is far less oil in the
ground than there i .;; coal. What•s more, more of the oil is
to be found in just one certain part of the world- the
regions around the Persian Gulf.
Now oil i s beginning to run short and people are
using it more and more every )'ear. The price is going up
and there is the danger of shortage. In 30 to S,O years
there may be no oil left al all.
\\hat will people do for energy when 1hat happens?
1

They can go back to coal. Coal, however, is still hard

to getout of the ground and difficult to move from place to
place. Oi l can be fonned from coal and from c::crtain
kfods of rocks. but it would then be very expensive.
Besides, oil and coal both hll the air with soot and wi th
irritating chemicals when they burn. This is "air
pollution" and it is bad for human heahh.
Are there sources of energy besides the chemical
energy of coal and oil that we can use? \\that about
nudear energy? The 011ly nuclear energy found 011 Earth
was the radioac::tivity of certain substances. For many
years that was very hard to put to use on a large scale. 64 neutrons
Io 1939, however, the German scientis1, Ono Hahn>
46 47
 found there wel'e ways of making the uranium nucleus
break in half (" nuc:ltal' fission"). He found that this
l'ele�cd even more nuclear energy than ordinary
radioac1jvily did.
In the United St.ates, scientists got to work at once to
see if nuclear fi�sion could be made 10 yield a great deal
of energy. At the end of 1942, the problem was solved by
people working under the leadership of the haliao•
American scientist, Enrico Fermi.
Fission bomlbs (also called "atomic bombs.,) were
buill as a resuh. These bombs, using nuclear energy,
created far more des11 · uc1ioo than ordioary bombs using
chemical energy.
After the Second World w · ar, nuclear fission was used
to build power plants that could produce energy withou1
explosions. ''l'his nuclear energy could be used 10 p1 · o duce
eJectricity for peaceful purposes. There are now fis.sion
power planes all over the world.
Nuclear fisskm is not really the bes1 ans,•lcr to the
energy shortage, though. For one thing, il makes use of
uranium and other simi lar metals Ihat arc not very
common. For another, once the uranium nucl ei break in
two, very dangerous radioac1ive atoms arc left behind.
Scientists arc not sure how to d ispose of these atoms
safely.
So scientists are stiJI looking for another energy source.
Peo ple could make more use of the energy of wind aod
of water currents. They oould use the energy of the rising
and falling tides. They cou ld use the energy of the heat
inside the Earth. They cou ld make use of the energy of
sunlight where is falls oo desert areas and where its
energy is other\,•ise wasted.
These kinds of enel'gy could last f()r millions, or even
thousand� of millions of years, Ollce scieotistS find out

48
49
Artist's impresslon of a space station

how to build the righL kind of power plants to make use Scientists have been hot on the trail of nuclear fusion
of 1 hem. for 30 years, and many people think the problem is about
Anolher possibilily is to make use of nuclear fosion, to be solved.
the kind of nuclear energy that powers the Sun and the So there may be no real pcrmancnl energy shortage. It
other stars. will take a liltlc 1ime, but scientists will probably find
There is a great deal of hydrogen on Eatth, aod if new sources of energy that will make il possible fol'
scientists )earn how to make its nuclei change to helium people on Earth to live comfortably-provided we keep
nucle i- much as t..his change takes place in the Sun­ our planeL livable and don't dcslroy our civi lisation by
that would be a source of a great deal of energy. This, nucleal' war.
too, could last for millions of years.

50 51