Go Back

Energy can change your state

Forms of Energy You have heard of the word "energy" all your life. You need to eat vegetables to grow strong and have "energy". You need to go to bed early so you will have "energy" in the morning to go to school. Energy is the ability to do work. Energy is everywhere in nature - sunlight, wind, water, plants, and animals. We use energy every day.

Energy is not matter, and you can't put it in a jar. Energy makes things happen. There are many sorts of energy like: * light * chemical * mechanical * heat * electric * atomic * sound

So, if you want to change a solid into a liquid, how do you do it? Simple, you add energy! If you heat up the atoms, they will be given more energy, and they will move around more, and change the solid into a liquid. This is what happens to ice if you apply heat, and warm it up. Even metal can become a liquid, but of course you need to apply huge amounts of heat to do it.

Adding energy will turn a solid into a liquid. Adding energy to a liquid will turn it into a gas. Adding even more energy will make it into a plasma!   So how do you turn a liquid back into a solid? Well, you need to remove energy, by cooling it down. If you put water into the freezer, it will eventually turn into ice.

It is interesting to think that our world is made up of atoms, and some of that is matter, and the rest is empty space! There are empty spaces inside the atoms, and between the atoms too. If you squashed a person down so they had no empty spaces left, I wonder how small they would be?

Look at this solid (ice), and how the particles are moving, just jiggling around a little bit.

Now add more heat, and see how they move around a lot more. This is how particles move around in water.

Now even more heat is added, turning the water into steam. See how fast the particles are moving around now!

Back to Top