Energy

The analysis based on friction is somewhat superficial, however. One could understand friction perfectly well and yet imagine the following situation. Astronauts bring back a piece of magnetic ore from the moon which does not behave like ordinary magnets.

A mysterious moon rock makes a perpetual motion machine.

A normal bar magnet, 1, attracts a piece of iron essentially directly toward it, and has no left- or righthandedness. The moon rock, however, exerts forces that form a whirlpool pattern around it, 2. NASA goes to a machine shop and has the moon rock put in a lathe and machined down to a smooth cylinder, 3. If we now release a ball bearing on the surface of the cylinder, the magnetic force whips it around and around at ever higher speeds. Of course there is some friction, but there is a net gain in speed with each revolution.

Physicists would lay long odds against the discovery of such a moon rock, not just because it breaks the rules that magnets normally obey but because, like the alchemists, they have discovered a very deep and fundamental principle of nature which forbids certain things from happening. The first alchemist who deserved to be called a chemist was the one who realized one day, In all these attempts to create gold where there was none before, all I've been doing is shuffling the same atoms back and forth among different test tubes. The only way to increase the amount of gold in my laboratory is to bring some in through the door.It was like having some of your money in a checking account and some in a savings account.

Transferring money from one account into the other doesn't change the total amount.

We say that the number of grams of gold is a conserved quantity. In this context, the word conserve does not have its usual meaning of trying not to waste something. In physics, a conserved quantity is something that you wouldn't be able to get rid of even if you wanted to. Conservation laws in physics always refer to a closed system, meaning a region of space with boundaries through which the quantity in question is not passing. In our example, the alchemist's laboratory is a closed system because no gold is coming in or out through the doors.

Conservation of mass.

In general, the amount of any particular substance is not conserved. Chemical reactions can change one substance into another, and nuclear reactions can even change one element into another. The total mass of all substances is however conserved:

the law of conservation of mass

The total mass of a closed system always remains constant. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but only transferred from one system to another.

A similar lightbulb eventually lit up in the heads of the people who had been frustrated trying to build a perpetual motion machine. In perpetual motion machine a, consider the motion of one of the balls. It performs a cycle of rising and falling. On the way down it gains speed, and coming up it slows back down. Having a greater speed is like having more money in your checking account, and being high up is like having more in your savings account. The device is simply shuffling funds back and forth between the two. Having more balls doesn't change anything fundamentally. Not only that, but friction is always draining off money into a third bank account: heat. The reason we rub our hands together when we're cold is that kinetic friction heats things up. The continual buildup in the heat account leaves less and less for the motion account and height account, causing the machine eventually to run down.

These insights can be distilled into the following basic principle of physics:

the law of conservation of energy

It is possible to give a numerical rating, called energy, to the state of a physical system. The total energy is found by adding up contributions from characteristics of the system such as motion of objects in it, heating of the objects, and the relative positions of objects that interact via forces. The total energy of a closed system always remains constant. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but only transferred from one system to another.

The moon rock story violates conservation of energy because the rockcylinder and the ball together constitute a closed system. Once the ball has made one revolution around the cylinder, its position relative to the cylinder is exactly the same as before, so the numerical energy rating associated with its position is the same as before. Since the total amount of energy must remain constant, it is impossible for the ball to have a greater speed after one revolution. If it had picked up speed, it would have more energy associated with motion, the same amount of energy associated with position, and a little more energy associated with heating through friction. There cannot be a net increase in energy.

Converting one form of energy to another.

The water behind the Hoover shoes. Dam has energy because of its position relative to the planet earth, which is attracting it with a gravitational force. Letting water down to the bottom of the dam converts that energy into energy of motion. When the water reaches the bottom of the dam, it hits turbine blades that drive generators, and its energy of motion is converted into electrical energy.

Discussion Questions

A	A Hydroelectric power (water flowing over a dam to spin turbines) appears to be completely free. Does this violate conservation of energy? If not, then what is the ultimate source of the electrical energy produced by a hydroelectric plant?