A Scientific Term That Should Be More Widely Known: Thermal Energy by Stella Rehbein (19)
A connection between a worldwide problem, climate change, and particle motion creates the necessity for understanding the effects of thermal energy to be explained to a larger audience. Thermal energy is one of the many types of energy. Thermal energy is defined as the transfer of heat between particles and this heat transfer will not cease until the particles have reached an equilibrium. Heat is the transfer of thermal energy as a result of the differences in temperature and temperature is just the average speed of the particles. The more kinetic energy the particles have, the faster the particles are moving, and the more thermal energy those particles will have. When these particles with a lot of thermal energy come into contact with particles with less thermal energy, these fast moving particles will bounce into the slow moving particles causing the slow moving particles to speed up and the fast moving particles to slow down until they reach equilibrium. This equilibrium depends on the specific heat capacity of the substances that are touching, which affects how fast they heat up or cool down depending on the amount of energy required to change the temperature.
Everything has a different amount of thermal energy, for example when when we touch something that is colder or hotter than our hand molecules, we feel heat or the absence of heat. We can now measure that heat we feel using a thermometer. In a thermometer (not the electric kind) we use ethanol because the particles of ethanol are not very attracted to each other, so when a liquid is placed in a beaker on a hot plate, the fast moving particles from the hot plate will increase the movement of the particles of the substance, making the particles in the thermometer, the ethanol particles, increase in their kinetic energy. Eventually the particles of the ethanol and the particles of the water will equilibrate. The bonds within the particles of the ethanol will stretch until the substance volume increases and the density decreases.
The equilibrium will show once the volume finishes increasing, or decreasing in the case that the thermometer was warmer than that of the substance. A thermometer could not have been created without the realization of thermal energy and particle motion in its relation to heat. On Earth, there is a natural cycle of CO2 being released into the air from breathing plants, etc and absorbed back into the Earth by the ocean, trees, and the soil. This CO2 traps a portion of the heat from the sun because the structure of CO2 and gases like it easily absorb heat, making the particles vibrate and move around the Earth's atmosphere while it is waiting to be reabsorbed, creating a blanket of warmth around the Earth called The Greenhouse Effect. The more carbon released, the hotter the Earth's temperature is, so after the Industrial Revolution, more greenhouse gases were released due to the increased burning of fossil fuels and more trees were cut down, so less CO2 was absorbed back into the Earth, creating a buildup of greenhouse gases. Typically these gases have very high specific heat capacity and they cannot store much heat. As the gas particles start to move faster, they will increase the speed of other gas particles such as oxygen in the air and because they have a high specific heat capacity, these particles will reach a temperature equilibrium that is more hot than cold.
The thermal energy of these particles will continue to travel down to Earth, increasing Earth’s temperature. As more hot gases are trapped and less are released, the particles will move faster, emitting more thermal energy and allowing heat to travel faster to different parts of Earth. This increasing temperature leads to regions becoming warmer, melting of glaciers, sea levels rising, increasing floods, and displacing human populations. It is very important to know about the effects of thermal energy and notice how it impacts your everyday life. Noticing thermal energy helped scientists to discover the thermometer as well as explain climate change, a global problem, which affects our world today.
Everything has a different amount of thermal energy, for example when when we touch something that is colder or hotter than our hand molecules, we feel heat or the absence of heat. We can now measure that heat we feel using a thermometer. In a thermometer (not the electric kind) we use ethanol because the particles of ethanol are not very attracted to each other, so when a liquid is placed in a beaker on a hot plate, the fast moving particles from the hot plate will increase the movement of the particles of the substance, making the particles in the thermometer, the ethanol particles, increase in their kinetic energy. Eventually the particles of the ethanol and the particles of the water will equilibrate. The bonds within the particles of the ethanol will stretch until the substance volume increases and the density decreases.
The equilibrium will show once the volume finishes increasing, or decreasing in the case that the thermometer was warmer than that of the substance. A thermometer could not have been created without the realization of thermal energy and particle motion in its relation to heat. On Earth, there is a natural cycle of CO2 being released into the air from breathing plants, etc and absorbed back into the Earth by the ocean, trees, and the soil. This CO2 traps a portion of the heat from the sun because the structure of CO2 and gases like it easily absorb heat, making the particles vibrate and move around the Earth's atmosphere while it is waiting to be reabsorbed, creating a blanket of warmth around the Earth called The Greenhouse Effect. The more carbon released, the hotter the Earth's temperature is, so after the Industrial Revolution, more greenhouse gases were released due to the increased burning of fossil fuels and more trees were cut down, so less CO2 was absorbed back into the Earth, creating a buildup of greenhouse gases. Typically these gases have very high specific heat capacity and they cannot store much heat. As the gas particles start to move faster, they will increase the speed of other gas particles such as oxygen in the air and because they have a high specific heat capacity, these particles will reach a temperature equilibrium that is more hot than cold.
The thermal energy of these particles will continue to travel down to Earth, increasing Earth’s temperature. As more hot gases are trapped and less are released, the particles will move faster, emitting more thermal energy and allowing heat to travel faster to different parts of Earth. This increasing temperature leads to regions becoming warmer, melting of glaciers, sea levels rising, increasing floods, and displacing human populations. It is very important to know about the effects of thermal energy and notice how it impacts your everyday life. Noticing thermal energy helped scientists to discover the thermometer as well as explain climate change, a global problem, which affects our world today.
