Forms of Energy
The Bioenergetic Blueprint #03
NB: This article is part of the Bioenergetic Blueprint series. The series is meant to be read in order. You can find its table of contents right here.
Peaty Disclaimer
Ever since humans invented language, we have enjoyed abstracting reality and manipulating “it” with our minds. Somewhere along that process though, we fooled ourselves into believing our projected abstractions were more real than reality; that they somehow reached beyond matter; that their whispers echoed wisdom from a divine source; in other words, that there was something metaphysical about them.
As the idea of energy developed across the sciences, it became increasingly abstracted and began yielding concepts practically independent from matter such as “potential energy”, which we cover further below. In the end, our general understanding was reduced to two clear-cut players: dead matter (i.e., changeless and eternal atoms, devoid of intelligence and identical to their equals through time and space) and energy (i.e., the life force that animates it, not unlike electricity animates a machine).1
Peat disagreed with this line of thinking. To him, matter is not just a dead, dumb substance, but contains a sort of intelligence—depending on its level of organization—that allows it to arrange and express itself further this way and that. Amongst other things, this entails that growth, development, evolution, etc. are not just the result of randomness and probability, but symptomatic of an underlying, dynamic, intentional, teleological intelligence (or organizing principle) in the universe, particularly manifest among its living organisms.
In parallel, Peat didn’t think atoms of a single element are exactly the same all over the cosmos; he believed time and history are also properties of matter. As an example of this, he references studies that used nascent oxygen (that is, “freshly born” oxygen), because its electron excitability made it particularly reactive compared to “old” oxygen.
To some conservative people, these ideas may appear as fantasy or hippie juju. To Peat, the opposite was true. He claimed much of the current “scientific” culture rested atop caryatids devoted to religion, hubris, and wishful thinking. “Biology in general”, he once said, “is basically a religious belief about matter; it is something very separate from science.”
Peat’s controversial tradition is nevertheless reflected in mainstream science on the concept of hysteresis: the phenomenon whereby the response of a system depends not only on its current state but also on the accumulation of its past ones—that is, on its history.2 Vernadsky, for example, explained the growth of plants by their aggregation of hysteretic changes within their physical substance, which simultaneously allowed more energy to flow through them and be captured in the form of new structure—a primordial feedback loop at the core of life itself.
This is why Peat once said that, in our very being, we represent the history of energy flowing: because our physical structure—as well as all the functions it produces (e.g., movement, thoughts, art, war, and love)—are ultimately manifestations of biological energy. This is also why he said:
The idea that energy produces a change in the arrangement of substance, that I think is the most important idea for thinking about biological energy. — Raymond Peat
Introduction
In the previous article, we learned that all energy in a given system can be categorized as either available for work (free) or not (unfree). We explored how measuring the change in free energy (±ΔG) indicates the energetic favorability of a certain reaction. We also recognized that energy conversion processes are not completely efficient, and typically result in some energy being released in forms other than work—usually heat.
But what is this “work”, exactly? What does it mean for energy to “do work”?
Essentially, work is the process through which energy is transferred or transformed from one form to another within a system. When we say energy “does work”, we mean it has been (at least) transformed from form A into form B.
A simple analogy:
Work is the “transaction” through which energy changes hands (forms). Energy is the “currency” that enables it. When a transaction (work) occurs, currency (energy) is transferred from one form to another.
This, of course, raises the question: What kind of forms can energy take? And what do they entail? How does energy manifest itself and make its presence felt in the world?
To get a sense of this, below are some most commonly recognized forms of energy. We will cover 5 of them briefly, and the 6th one in a bit more detail, because in my experience many people tend to find it confusing.
1. Kinetic Energy
Energy as Movement
Consider the force you feel when hit by a strong wave, that exerted by a rolling boulder, or the one carried by a bullet. All of these examples are manifestations of kinetic energy. This energy isn’t just limited to large visible movements though; even the rapid motion of atoms and molecules in the air around belong to it.
In classical mechanics, kinetic energy (KE) is equal to half of an object’s mass (m) multiplied by the velocity (v) squared:3
This means that KE is directly proportional to both the mass and the square of the velocity of the object. In other words:
More mass = more kinetic energy
More velocity = a lot more kinetic energy
For this reason, a bowling ball and a baseball can have similar kinetic energy, despite their significant disparities in mass.
2. Potential Energy
Energy as Possibility
Unlike kinetic energy, potential energy is related to the potential for motion. Any object might possess such potential due to its relative position/condition in its environment, such as being high up (gravitational potential energy) or stretched out (elastic potential energy).
In our very first article, we gave the example of a coffee cup sitting on a desk. We could also talk about a stretched-out bow, full of latent power, ready to be released. Both examples have potential “energy” in them; that is, they have the potential for motion, which is currently being impeded by one thing or another.
This of course means that potential energy is a property of a system and not of an individual body or particle. The system composed of Earth and the raised coffee cup, for instance, has more potential energy as the two are farther away.
Potential energy is therefore a relative concept, which implies its value will depend on the point of reference from which we measure it. For example, if we are dealing with gravitational potential energy, we will need to choose a point of reference to do so (usually the ground). Choosing any other reference will alter this value.
3. Thermal Energy
Energy as Heat
Thermal energy is the internal energy of an object due to the motion of its particles, such as atoms or molecules. More specifically, it is the sum of the kinetic and potential energy of the particles within a system.
Thermal energy is obviously related to the concept of temperature, which itself is a measure of the average kinetic energy of particles within a system. However, it’s important to know two objects at the same temperature can have different amounts of thermal energy due to differences in mass, heat capacity, or phase (solid, liquid, gas). Thus, a large body of water at a moderate temperature can contain more thermal energy than a small flame.
The faster the atoms or molecules in a substance move, the more thermal energy they have, and consequently, the hotter they feel to the touch. Everything around us, from the freezing polar ice caps to the scalding lava spewed by volcanoes, possesses thermal energy.
4. Chemical Energy
Energy as Bonds
When it comes to chemical energy, we are not concerned with the motion of atoms and particles in a given object, but with their structural energy; that is, the energy they possess within their chemical bonds.
Food contains plenty of chemical energy stored in its molecular bonds. Our bodies have evolved to extract this energy through metabolic processes. The fact that you can read this text is, in part, a result of your body converting chemical energy from food into forms like ATP, which powers electrical activities, such as the function of your cells and the nerve signals across your nervous system.
Chemical energy, therefore, is a type of potential energy, because it is stored within atomic bonds, and released when they participate in a chemical reaction. When discharged, chemical energy is transformed into kinetic and thermal energy.
Chemical → Kinetic Energy: In a chemical reaction, atoms and molecules move and interact rapidly, forming new bonds and structures. This process converts part of the chemical energy into kinetic energy.
Chemical → Thermal Energy: Many chemical reactions release heat, transforming chemical energy into thermal energy. This release of heat is what makes fires warm and is the basis for the operation of internal combustion engines.
The release or absorption of energy during chemical reactions—whether as heat or other forms—is what drives these reactions. Endothermic reactions absorb energy from their surroundings, while exothermic reactions release it.
5. Nuclear Energy
Energy as Nuclei
Nuclear energy is stored in the very core of atoms, far from the electron clouds we often associate with chemical reactions.
Unlike chemical energy—which involves the electrons in atomic bonds—nuclear energy deals with the protons and neutrons in the nucleus. The forces that hold these particles together are incredibly strong and, when manipulated, can release a staggering amount of energy.
The energy of the nucleus can be released through two different operations:
Fission: The splitting of a heavy nucleus into two lighter ones, releasing a large amount of energy. This is the force behind both the power of atomic bombs and the electricity produced in nuclear power plants.
Fusion: The combining of two light nuclei to form a heavier one, also releasing energy. The sun itself is a colossal fusion reactor, converting hydrogen into helium and releasing vast amounts of nuclear energy in the process.
So, whether it’s lighting up cities or powering celestial furnaces, nuclear energy is a force to be reckoned with—and it is stored at the very core of the fundamental building blocks of matter.
6. Electromagnetic Energy
Energy as Waves
Finally, allow me to slow down and spend a bit more time on this form of energy, because it tends to confuse people, and because it will be relevant to future articles.
Whenever you throw a pebble into a body of water, their interaction creates waves that propagate outwards. These waves will vary depending on how big and heavy the pebble is, how fast it falls, the particular viscosity of the water (as a result of its content and/or temperature), the local atmospheric pressure, etc.
Yet, at any moment during this wave propagation, water itself is not actually moving outwards, away from the epicenter. If you were to isolate any particular water molecule participating in a wave, it would “simply” be moving up and down, slower and slower as time passed until it remained still.
So, it is the way all water molecules orchestrate this up-and-down (oscillating) motion that makes a wave emerge on the surface of the water. It’s fundamentally no different than when football fans make a wave across a stadium: none of them are traveling in the direction of the wave, yet the wave itself travels across all of them.
This wave phenomenon happens all the time, across all sorts of mediums (i.e., channels). Water waves unfold across the water. Sound waves unfold across the air. But there is a particular type of wave that doesn’t need a physical medium at all to propagate, which is what allows it to do so even across the vacuum of space.
Of course, I’m talking about electromagnetic waves.
Just like water waves are oscillations in a “field of water”, electromagnetic waves are oscillations in what’s called an electromagnetic field. But unlike water, the electromagnetic field is composed of two different and interdependent fields: the electric and the magnetic one (I bet you didn’t see that coming).
For this reason, each electromagnetic wave is a “fusion” of two waves. One of the waves is an oscillating magnetic field; the other is an oscillating electric field. These two waves oscillate perpendicular to each other, like this:
You can think of it as if two water waves somehow existed perpendicular to each other, and the force from one of them generated the force of the other.
One question remains though: What is the “parent disturbance” that causes the wave to propagate? In the case of water, it was the water field being disrupted by a pebble that initiated the wave. What about the electromagnetic field?
Because we are dealing with two different fields, our “parent disturbance” can also be two different things: either a change in the electric field or a change in the magnetic field.
A change in the electric field can be as simple as having a subatomic particle move up and down. Because it is “entangled” within its electromagnetic field, moving up and down disturbs it, just like moving up and down one end of a bed sheet very quickly causes ripples to propagate all throughout it.
But remember, we are not dealing with one bedsheet here, but two—rippling perpendicular to each other—which means changes in the electric field also cause changes in the magnetic field, which cause changes in the electric field, and so on, and so forth (literally).
This is what creates an “independent”, self-propagating (or, rather, self-regenerating) wave that travels across space, leaving its initial parent disturbance behind. And so, when a subatomic particle radiates waves into space in the form of electromagnetic waves—that is, disturbances in the invisible electromagnetic “sheets” that permeate reality—we call this phenomenon electromagnetic radiation.
When you think of electromagnetic energy, consider the sunlight that warms your skin, the X-rays used in medical imaging, or the microwaves that heat your food. These are all different forms of electromagnetic energy, manifesting across a spectrum that ranges from radio waves (low-frequency radiation) to gamma rays (high-frequency radiation). And just like radios are “tuned” to pick up specific radio waves, our eyes are “tuned” to perceive a certain range of electromagnetic radiation, which we call “visible light.”
The energy carried by an electromagnetic wave is directly related to its frequency: higher frequency waves like X-rays and gamma rays carry more energy than lower frequency waves like radio waves. This is why exposure to high-frequency electromagnetic radiation, like X-rays, is controlled and minimized: it carries a lot of energy that can be disastrously harmful. But that is not to say lower energy (non-ionizing) radiation cannot have biological effects—in fact, it very much does, because we are at our core bioelectrical organisms.
That is the gist of it at least; I cover this particular topic more in-depth in Modern Detox.
Conclusion
Friends, that is all for now. I hope this brief overview of the forms of energy has helped you get a better grasp of what energy is and how it manifests itself throughout the cosmos and our lives. There is much to cover still—but there is no rush.
Up next, we will begin to take a closer look at what all of this entails from a physiological standpoint. Make sure you subscribe if you don’t want to miss it.
Until then, upwards,
Yago
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The “nothing ever happens” crowd will be happy to know this can be thought of as a rehash of the age-old philosophical problem of Being versus Becoming.
For instance: if you have a material like a magnet, how it reacts to a magnetic field can depend on how it was magnetized before. This means the system doesn't instantly follow the changes in the input (like the magnetic field) but shows some lag or delay, related to its history.
This formula above breaks down when dealing with speeds close to that of light. At those speeds, the object’s mass changes from the perspective of an outside observer, and special rules called “laws of relativity” apply.
Thank you for your amazing contributions to understanding energy. Helping me a lot. The span of your knowledge, analogies, is huge. Wonderful.