How is energy different from matter? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice break down what energy is and where it comes from, ancient theories about sight, and how wheels keep us moving. Explore physics, thermodynamics, and more!
NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here:https://startalkmedia.com/show/things-you-thought-you-knew-what-is-energy/
Thanks to our Patrons Matt Smith, Matthew Tolbert, benjamin flanders, Nick Davis, Joseph, and Hemant Sudiwala for supporting us this week.
Photo Credit: Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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gradually grassy. As you say, sea empress, the matter I say when you shut smoking, fuck, I'm just saying
I'm ready talk about this all day is welcomed by weight
Was our welcome start off your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide dartle begin right now this is Startalk things. Youth
You knew addition, so I was just thinking how much we take for granted about
when we use the word energy
and it has profound origins.
when our understanding of energy have profound origins, the brain
of newton who discovered the laws of optics and grow
DE in motion in and invented calculus
Energy was not fully developed concept in his time, and so so I just want to sort spend a few minutes offering an appreciation worth a try.
Of the human intellect to figure out what the hell energy is and then how to manufacture it and exploit it as going to spend a few minutes. This was like a public service announcement for energy, so I energy is not a thing.
Right, because eyre rock is a thing and you can point to it or when it is a thing and
energy is not a thing, and so
It was delayed in our ability to understand what it was and how to think about it. So we knew some things. For example, when you had a cannon would back when cannons
were like a popular tool in warfare right there, physicist at the time who said
I have a cannonball and have his gun powder
and the cannon is made of iron. Then I fire it, and if I keep doing this, the cannon gets hotter and hotter, but where's that he coming from. So what is it? And so in the urge to turn?
energy into a thing. Early ideas was that there were
Energy was a flu was a thing
Couldn't you move in and out of objects? Ok, one of them. They call it was just
then another one was a caloric,
these were words invented to try to think about.
Energy as an ever thing moves,
it's gotta be somewhere and and so hard can. It had more of this in it, then a cold cannon, and so, and so
you have to start somewhere, we were crawling before we even could walk and it wasn't until we undressed
if the molecules and atoms in and that we were able to say, hmm, oak and and what role friction plays in this, we ought to say so. You can store energy in different ways and when you
story is not manifesting itself, it's. What I hear I am looking is not really doing that and when your store ring
No, the arctic is not in motion. No, the object is not you know.
is not all these things that it is. When is manifesting, so I think the simple case, a roller coaster.
Ok, right, every rollercoaster, the first assent is the highest. We're. Ok
So, what's going on so there you go and leaning back, and this thing cranks you up. It is endowing you with energy potential energy stored energy potential, gravitational energy. When you get to the top, you can calculate how, because we're foreigners
calculate how much gravitational energy it handed. You gonna feel this energy. I dunno what you're talking about until I push you over that ledge rights over
other side of that hill. Then what happens is
more potential energy starts, converting to emetic energy and its exact tradeoff, an exact
os shop, all their energy. They gave you at the top right. Ok, now,
always return with you speeding up, as you said, and that is when the ham sandwich becomes actual vomit.
If that's a transformation of another guy but yeah, I'm so, and it's this trade off and it goes back and forth as you go up hills and down. If you've got a shorter hill, then
first one. Ok, you have enough energy to reach the top of the hill, because
started out with way more energy than that at an even higher hill
you. Little use some energy to friction. Ok, so in other words, you can send back to a hill exactly the same height, but you start
Ok, some energy will go to friction and when you,
energy. To friction that makes heat, that's the source.
When you lose energy sought this wave, the inn,
of your car get hot right
not all the energy that you started with got transferred to the motion of the car. The losses went to friction. Friction heated, your engine, your engine,
You talk. Ok, so in a row across you converting gravitation potential, every two kinetic energy
back and forth back and forth back and forth. They designed it right there
frictional energy that you lose. Ok, you don't go up higher and higher
that, though hills you go over, have to get lower and lower and there's the last one than you come in for the star right. So
They gave you the energy when you started at the top of the hill, so that's gravitational potential energy becoming kinetic energy that that's. What's going on there and, like I said, if you go back up, was shorter hill, you'll slowdown,
research can arrogance is giving back to you, so you can have another little lump of of potential energy to take the next overcomes. After that I so that's easy. We ve had roller coaster forever. You could have imagined them forever ago, but it's more complicated or a little more physics involved. If you want to say this molecule has entered
A molecule the humming gonna get the energy out of the moment. You just sit there. Oh well, you can in one case burn it.
Burn the molecule: ok, why is it.
Can you a log in the fire.
And the largest room temperature you put in the fire in the fire
ignites the log in a law keep burning. These fears, chemical potential
energy in the molecules or the morgue.
We did their energy come from
what did the neg get that energy chuck? You tell me right now. The log is it's it's from it's molecules. It was storing weird and it's molecules get their energy. Okay. Let me think about this them off from their atoms.
What did the log used to be? No, I used to be a tree
how does the treaty energy from the sun? Thank you pick him up at this. The sun bill molecules that contains
lord energy! So that's! Why would burns because it is stored
full of energy given to it by the sun? Look at that
In addition, sending their moment of solemn business, but that's why fight
yours in homes are so deadly, because this all this potential,
energies stored in the molecules of organic,
I would if your house's made of wood so that
I thing: there's converting the chemically chemical energy into thermal energy.
just so much of our lives is the convention.
and the energy of one form into another and what happens while that's going on so other forms of energy, these energy in the nucleus of an atom
Yes, you split the nuclear and taken a we make bomb was doing that. Ok, so we turned
clear energy into the cap,
netteke energy of an explosion to do damage to things in warfare. Ok, that's nuclear or chemical energy.
Some chemicals will give you their energy, not slowly, like it
slowly, Bernie walk, who give it? You had a frantically right and we call those bombs. Thank that were a firecracker catastrophically. The energy goes too
break apart. The firecracker goes into the sound that it makes the shock wave or that
so our lives and everything we do is nothing but a a ballet
of the conversion of energy from one form into another. So when we consume food that has calories
a one for one definition of calorie is energy, so you beat food that has to look at the california as much energy. It has so then
you consume it. You need energy to live to move your heart beats all. This requires
energy getting from the calories of the food you eat. What happens if you consume more calories, then you need that. Is your body says for that so increase.
if it creates chemical potential energy in the form of fat and stores it away. I'm not fat! I'm just filled with potential talk about you see this. This isn't that so potentially Michael B, Jordan, I am Michael Jordan. That's what the potential
myself packages beneath the potential as a lot of attention, don't even then
good you with your have and by that.
Conversion of you.
bodies. Calories to your entered
is not perfectly efficient. So what happened?
It's to that excess energy? That is not converted. If that the inefficiency of your body, all it were an engine of sorts, it's inefficient so that inefficiency gets converted to heat. So your body heats up when your exercise
This is a consequence of the inefficiency of your body, but your body loves that, because now it is part of your temperature regulating system. But I'm just saying
You when you exercise your body heats up in the same way. You do
require the car eats up
same way.
The wheels and the tracks of a roller coaster, actually getting hot because of the inefficiency of the conversion. Is this enough?
season every conversion of energy from one form to another, so the only point of this is just to say so much of what we do and how we live.
Involves the lever conversion of energy from one form to another nuclear energy, chemical energy, which is molecular? We have kinetic energy gravitational energy.
All of this comes together and our ability to exploit that in the service of civilization is one of the great triumphs of physics, especially nineteenth century physics, where they figured out. Oh, my gosh look what we can do
another quick one. Just look a locomotive right well, what's going on, there well
locomotive
if you remember they'd, have to fill up with from water tanks.
every now and then
What is the water do? Well,
a motive burns either coal or wood and heat save. So that's the chemical energy. It hits a vat of water. So it's getting stored chemical energy of the wood into the
active thermal energy of the vibrating water molecules. They then evaporate creating pressure for the steam,
then move we all they have.
Locomotive go forward
oh my gosh, and that all started with solar energy. It made the wood or the coal that made the
the fire that made the boiling water that made the pressure that moves the wheels. All of this is a triumph of our understanding of energy, and now what you just said there I can hear at some going. Listen guys were actually solar energy. A k
What we have had this, the council also
the guy that sold his solar energy l k muscle fuel started as solar energy. This is true. This is true reminds me of this bumper sticker. It says no nukes re from
anti nuke movement and then the o
in the know, is an image of the sun. Was his load books, know thyself
Why don't they meet him and what you do? Solar energy, but the sunday
energy with nukes righteously. Make that clear here. That's how that started. That way,
So anyhow, I just thought I put all that out there and that took just to enhance our appreciation for what energy does for us and how being clever
has enabled us to bill civilization on the exploitation of
in energy from one form into another. It has built civilization and ultimately it will do
thrice, happy motives
four unique summer get away how about a trip to the year? Thirty, twenty three, that
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Only on hulu, I'm jolt, jericho and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmic mugs, dot, com, cosmic monks, art that lets you taste the universe every day and I support star talk on patriotic,
this is star talk with neil the grass thyssen Krupp. Wouldn't I don't
Let's see her know that it is, if she ever said to me.
Look here a might know
What
No, I'm not looking to make love to hear your. She make eye contact with you
turn to stone, re she famously
the night sky, she's out immortalized
didn't, has endeavoured head of new medusa is immortalized held by the perseus perseus as a consolation in the sky and there's a star called our goal, which is a variable star. It changes its brightness over relatively short periods of time,
of invariable stars, and the eye of the severed head is algal. So this is
who say by looking at you with a pretty fun and, of course pursued.
Where's the hero in the story with andromeda, who is the daughter of cassio pay?
and she was
I don't remember wild cassiopeia said she was more beautiful than this scene nymphs.
And then then out of punishment. They took her daughter and strapped her to the cliffs and for the sea. Monster. Perseus comes to save, to save her yet to slay medusa right right, and so he does it by looking.
her, but through the reflection of his shield right and that waves, not a direct direct, sideline
I believe laser for that and backs up to it
laser backwards. Right, though, rang cool and a cuts off her head
and puts it in a in a in a sack or ceases in the sky rides on the back to go. Save andromeda by showing the severed head of medusa
to the cracking and crack and turned to stone and
crumble away because he's too big to be stone
as a result
say that's a big chance. A percy is took that you know the severed head would still be able to do its thing
good get bigger, rather than just with closed eyelids regularity. I pry eyelids with two
If they had any act. As you know a lot of times, you know he had a makes. Horsey die what our eyes open, probably friendly,
rise. The surprise
I say and put our stupid trick of look about heard through those guys we're eyes like a camp we set up out with it.
There were three sounds like report sets medusa, probably ass,
I believe I that is not true.
The ogre, so all of them are in the night sky. We got andromeda medusa cassiopeia. Otherwise, while saying all this is there's a whole set of legend,
That derive from the expectation that when you look at someone or anything that you're son
ing out some being of energy,
information or why, as though seeing was an active.
Aspect of what it is to obtain information.
I see you because, because I'm going out there and I'm getting you
rendering a you arrived in both my varying right right right, so
that is not how seeing works- and this was not established until about thirteen hundred years ago in the Middle east
in what we say: call the golden age of Islam. Our hazan, occasionally referred to, as our hasten both of those, I think, are legitimate names for him
One of the great scientists of the era irl in early scientists in the history of scientists kept good notes. Had I prophecies of how things work he looked at
cow eyeball saw lands saw that you can make
image on the back of the eyeballs and he deduced that the act of site is one hundred percent passive, all reception.
All reception, so you can't just give some of the Google eyes and have
say who feel someone's looking at me. People will still say that all experiments
of that. No, you cannot tell if you do it in a better controlled setting. You cannot tell when someone's looking at you, but I'm not sure I got way because some so casually subway.
just get the feeling that comes up the Breton return and there is some creepy purse
staring at you talk away. They want
that's right. You know you in new york any other place.
somebody and they look away like all shoot. I was greatly worshippers about it. I can't believe I was right here in new york. You turn at them and legislate. That's right! I'm going to give you your life
scare people from the new ways does not work. Here's my point anytime. You turn around. Could you think so?
staring at you ran. They are staring at you right, you have not.
courted the thousands of times. People were also staring at you
well you didn't turn around to notice road day this. This is when you do the control setting this. This is the case. So it's just an interesting
fact the bible stories about who was it that turned back and she became a powerful.
Like her life, she observed the destruction of saddam and they were told whatever you do do not look back and so sadly violated there. They directive look
at the destruction and turned to stone in doing so. Ok, so that case, that might not be her sending out a signal from her eyeball. So that sounds like a more logical consequence of this relative to reduce
Look at it, you re eyes, light up, and then you turned to stone. So so it's an interesting history. How you can then there can be mythology, use that rise up around the physiological misconceptions.
That make for interesting stories right right and people used to be thought of his dying of a broken heart all right. Maybe
but actual heart attack or a bad, and you know there
it was being used. Here was hygiene, but Francis bacon was just breaker breaker made it as it is.
like he died of broken heart. No! No,
you will have read as colleagues less raw the man who had begun with every single meal, and you
you came to the uk. You don't want to take away the romance of dying of a broken heart. That's all! So it's just it's just fine! So I don't. I don't object to misconceptions if you have no better explanation at the time and it becomes part of her fill of our cultural sense of the world mean that this is what
this the richness and the depth of history that we experience has a culture who knows wait. I've saying about here is a problem with dead, though swung some one of your particular acuity can say that can say
This is part of the wondrous romance of lightning element of our having elements of life. There were able, because you repression, who understands the scientific method, yours somebody who, in a believes in data
and empiricism. You know. Bout ok, put the problem with that that charming that wonder that you know these these, these idiosyncratic. You know things that happen. That way,
tribute meaning to them. You know that where, attributing that mean, we are of fixing meaning,
Those things they don't really have meaning the problem is, there are a bunch of dumb asses who
who actually believe cook
they believe this
It's no land, no disputes what
since we ve learned how all this work is no excuse to continue to think it's true, and that's what you talk,
The guy who were
delayed in their acceptance of objective reality.
And I'm with you there, but I'm not gonna judged people from long ago.
I stand all. Ok, ok, not know what will you got me yet best? That's how to give it to note here that their bare perfectly acceptable they
no other information so therefore boom
get a it exactly exactly
and right on down to those who imagine that someone have any epileptic seizure,
we're being invaded by the devil right right, and so you go get the priest
They do the holy water and ended andy's remodelled symptoms
the teachers over the twenty man's easier and we're just ended, because
as always the church five hundred,
ago, it's like two blocks away right. Is that just in time for the priest to get there so gives its? We try to make sense of the world, and I saw I don't
You know I'm Moselle valley and use that said that, as an example shows that there is a great example, because we can actually see
the brain. Now we can see the activity of the brain.
And exactly what is happening in the brain that causes us epileptic. So there we're not seeing the devil. What we are seeing is a neural
nap did break down or malfunction bright, and so you know, but where did the devil go? You know
It like lie here. I ran away from home. Is that right? But if a fine in the face of science just don't leave any science agencies that allocate?
referred for ever you at all.
I got a dreadful already. This one is going to be about we'll. Ok, I'm gonna Sayer
say a bit just three and four: you look so did you know that if you drive and down the road to greater speed sixty miles an hour
at a may, sound, ok efforts? You got gotta bump that up by about twenty five and now we're talking at whatever speed, you're going. Okay, there is a part of your car. Alright, that is going forward at zero miles per hour at all times. All right. This already got interesting cause. I ok! I have no idea what you're talking about right now, there's a another part of your car going forward at twice that speed at every moment. Oh god, ok, okay, alright! So, okay, you're, ready! Okay! Are you okay? Here we go.
Okay, it's all happening in your wheels, so the part of the wheel at a moment that contact with the pavement is not moving at all. It's right, damn it. If not, if your car was skidding,
right on the part of the wheel in contact with the road would be way forward would be at the bridge, your skidding forum
That's why you're way forward
why you, maybe because part of the wheel
it's not moving at all, because it was a few piece failing a place that would be spinning a place.
What why they re? Ok now you know what to do again.
ok
I just say I don't I gotta say I now am first of all this, what I would do right now, I'm a public
I apologise to you said I was thinking
That's because before you gonna, let you jason apologized you right now.
Because you will like our right up we're going to talk about this,
last month we gonna talk about wheels very quickly, I argued fitted go ahead. Let's go for whisky bout that
so the center of the wheel right.
words. Ok, it's spinning, but the exact center is going forward at the same speed. The car is absolute forget that top of the wheel is going forward at twice the speed of the cost of speed and car. Ok, just like at twice the red.
Right, ok, because notice. If the chassis of the car is moving at the speed of the car. Obviously the top of the wheel is moving faster than the chassis right. Ok is moving pass, the
As at the top of the wheel, well we'll well, the top of the wheel well is going forward at your speed at your dread arbiters feed. The top of the wheel is going
faster than that right to come around to the bottom, so that is not moving at all as
and feedback. If you run the math on that, you get you get zero at the bottom. The speed of the
are in the middle of the wheel twice the speed of the car at the top of the wheel, and so this is this is the geometry. The math and the physics over would have an actual wheel on any moving vehicle shut, such access.
struck smoking of just say: I'm ready talk about this all day
I welcome the way, our as awesome. That is awesome.
wait, and this goes down on the wheel as an adopt at the chassis and then comes ass. It has to go faster and faster, faster test.
a fast. So I can tell you that we are well that's, so they can come around correct financial. Now, now think of the wheel, that's on a train! Ok, the train wheels are different rights, the different from car wheels. Obviously, so there is the metal flat part that touches the the men.
Rails, but then there's another part, that's like an outer outer it. What's the worst, I use that it's like a couple or there's an outer part that extends outside of the track
right. Okay, can you picture this wrangling on a track? Sounds like a lip in like a lip on the title itself, a lift that extends outside of the track.
Which enables the train to stay on the tracks. Otherwise, will just drive off right so that these lips there are exterior to the wheels?
keep it train aligned on the track? Ok right, but here's was interesting. They
below the contact points.
we'll and the real threat that, by
little bit by whatever it is they dipped below all right? Well, if the top
have you we're was going twice the speed
The set of the wheel is going to the speed
bottom of the wheel is going zero, anything
lower than the bottom of the wheel, is moving backwards. Oh snap,.
Ok, we're very soon reverse.
go allow for any train their parts of their train that are moving backwards on the track at all times. Wow, that's that's pretty! While at an agent
the picture that there's the wheel, rolling part is below. The coin is moving backwards. It actually lands in a play.
behind where it started right. That means it moved backwards right, that's insane!
That's all I do not. I put that out there. I know its not nothing deeper than that. I've been never mind what I could woman and put her on the traps.
I will let her know that this, if you're, going to learn something that this is what you do chuck. Okay,
As far as I am now as its world, my must now here's peer something interesting ready for so that means there's a part of your car. That's going at all speeds from zero up to twice the speed of the car. Correct! That's right! Ok! So imagine this imagine attaching some device to your we'll that's
sends out a microwave signal and you can adjust it up or down. Ok from the centre, the wheel to the outer rim and sends out of order for the scent of the will to the bottom sends out a microwave signal that room report a speed of your car at any speed you choose. So the police officers there with a radar again
with the return signal. That's going thirty miles an hour even though you're going sixty just sort so they'll get the reflected signal off of your car right. But if you can override that with a more powerful signals sent from your wheels, you can broadcast any speed. You choose down to zero if its attached to the wheel right
as the speed I'm choosing. By the way we had two zero because they know you lie as well, as does anyone have any place anyplace between this
better the wheel in the bottom bottom of the wheel it will, you can break, has the speed of that spinning wheel at any speed less than your actual driving speed
but it took to configure this would be really weird and how to make that happen, because it has to be
living with the time. I don't know how you design the engineering of that, but it is something to think about
because there's always a party or car, that's going everywhere from the speed of your car down to zero and up to twice the speed of the car. Well, maybe when the cop pulls you over, you can just tell him. I don't know what speed he recorded, but it I dunno. You should have been looking at the bottom of my wheels and it was yeah that'll work in court, yeah
So that's all. I have to say about wheels but adds that was pretty damn good. I mean side by my language that was pretty dawdling good at now,
and now there's a completely surprised, take I'm taken aback by this one, yeah and there's another kind of wheel, which is the shape of the object that rotates within a winkel engine. So if you imagine an equal lateral triangle, but are there corners
and make the sides a little bit convicts right. Yeah carrying I had amassed, wants you dead
with the waigel engine mazo, so bad shape. Interesting way, the distance from the bottom to the top remains the same, no matter how it
oriented so if you roll it along the. If I made one of these shapes fact, I don't have one with me here, but we might have to do
explainer, we used to call them spiral graphs. When I was a kid
Yeah they're related
right, the related geometry to it. So, if you take a plank in place of on top of one
he's triangular shapes and role at the plank will be absolutely steady. Even looks like the thing is bobbing up and down its cause. There's no central actual
Right, ok, we think a we'll need a wheel that gives you a smooth ride, needs one central axel, there's a wheels, the same distance to each point on the rims. You can design a shape where the top is always the same
since from the bottom, even though the centre is moving in your spiral, graphic sort of way,
ny, so I actually built one of these when I was a kid and in woodshop in seventh grade- and I don't think it's with me here and has been a closet somewhere else- I'm gonna have to dig it up and we'll do another one just fun things to do with with a winkle engine.
It's an unfortunate name, but yeah right all right. It's a little weird! It is a little weird one of the many engines that have been developed over the years to convert a chemical energy into kinetic energy, so
Men will do with idle we'll do it and explain our just on engines in the history of vengeance. Oh, that's why they differ from each other and whither headed
that that's a good one! Now you know that part of your car, it ain't moving at all, but don't use that as the excuse when you get pulled over or don't experiment with how the cop will react.
if you give out as an excuse right, you don't want, we gotta call equip their start.
Things, you thought you knew addition. Jack
it's good to have you, I'm neil grass tyson your personal astrophysicist,
As always, I believe people.
Transcript generated on 2023-08-04.