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Actually, a Fourth of July picnic in the park with family, friends and neighbors presents the perfect scenario to think about all the ways we use chemical potential energy without even thinking about it. On a deeper level, the bonds we chemically make or break—and maybe make again—are reflected in the bonds we create or destroy with other people, locally and nationally.…
When you compress a spring, like the one in the click mechanism of a ballpoint pen, you’re using the force (the physics version, F = -kx, not the “Star Wars” version, sorry) to push the spring in, and this force, exerted over a distance, gives you work—which, as we covered in February, is measured in the same units as energy: joules.…