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Consider a thunderstorm, nature’s best display of electric energy. Through complicated collisions and Sisyphean updrafts within the storm, particles with negative charges are driven toward the cloud base, with positive charges accumulating near the top. This separation creates a large electric potential difference (voltage) between the cloud base and the ground below, because the ground often becomes positively charged in response.…
I once saw a magazine ad claiming a magnetic bracelet would heal my pain. Conveniently for the seller, the bracelet was also expensive. Proponents of this “ionized jewelry” claim these magnets can improve blood flow, reduce pain and balance your body’s energy fields.…
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.…