During chemistry class this week, one of our main discussions was if it was possible to change the temperature without changing the state of matter. We are able to deem this true by increasing the particle movement and the particle spacing too. Other measurable factors that could potentially have an affect on the movement of particles were temperature, volume, viscocity, and mass. From there, we conducted the "hotness" lab, where there was a flask full of 500mL of ice water and a smaller flask with 10mL of water at 50 degrees Celsius and then another flask with 100mL of water at 25 degrees Celsius. The flask with 10mL of hot water was then poured into the flask of ice water, before having the temperature recorded. The same was done for the flask with 100mL of warm water, only it was poured into a seperate flask of 500mL of ice water. When comparing the temperature measurements from both flasks, it was clear that the warm water had more of an affect on the ice water than the cold water did. As both of the waters were poured into the ice water, energy was being added into that system. Energy can be associated with the motion/speed of particles, for temperature doesn't depend on how many particles there are, but rather how fast they move. This then brought up the discussion of what really is energy...
When discussing energy, we were able to list various different kinds of it: kinetic potential, thermal, chemical, nuclear, solar, hydro, wind, etc. But when it came down to defining it, the explanation was simple: energy is energy is energy! It was like talking about Baskin Robbins; while there are 35 different flavors of ice cream, in the end, it's all just ice cream. Energy has the ability to be stored and transferred, but one cannot simply "get rid of energy". An example to help further explain this that of an iPod, and how its music be e-mailed, burned from a CD, or bought on iTunes without these transfers changing the state of the song. Energy also can be viewed as a substance-like quantity that has the ability to be stored in a physical system. It also is able to "flow" or be "transferred" from one system to another, which can cause changes, but still maintains its identity after being transferred. However, energy is NOT the same thing as heat; if you mix the two up, you owe the class a dollar!
