What experiment can be used to prove interconversion of kinetic and potential energy with the ability to take observations and calculations?
Please give a brief summary of how the experiment would be conducted.
Answers
Some reactions which are very important in the context of energy and environment, such as the conversion between CO and CO2, or H+ and H2, are catalyzed in living organisms by large and complex enzymes that use inorganic active sites to transform substrates, chains of redox centers to transfer electrons, ionizable amino acids to transfer protons, and networks of hydrophobic cavities to guide the diffusion of substrates and products within the protein. This highly sophisticated biological plumbing and wiring makes turnover frequencies of thousands of substrate molecules per second possible. Understanding the molecular details of catalysis is still a challenge. We explain in this review how a great deal of information can be obtained using an interdisciplinary approach that combines state-of-the art kinetics and computational chemistry. This differs from—and complements—the more traditional strategies that consist in trying to see the catalytic intermediates using methods that rely on the interaction between light and matter, such as X-ray diffraction and spectroscopic techniques.
We will consider first the interconversion of potential energy and kinetic energy. We will then consider the interconversion of different types of energy: mechanical energy, electrical energy, chemical energy, and so on. Interconversion of potential energy and kinetic energy We have already seen that one form of energy can change into another. We have seen, for example, that when a bowling ball is dropped its potential energy changes into kinetic energy. The slamming of a screen door is analogous: the potential energy of the open door with the stretched spring turns into the kinetic energy of the moving door as the door slams. The swinging of a pendulum also exemplifies the interconversion of potential energy and kinetic energy. At the extremes of its arc the pendulum is at rest and its energy is entirely potential. At the lowest point of its arc the energy of the pendulum is entirely kinetic. Conservation of energy One of the greatest insights of science is that energy is neither gained nor lost; it just changes form. Energy, that is, is conserved. Considering the bowling ball story one might ask Where did the kinetic energy go when the ball hit the ground? Believers in the conservation of energy would say that most of that kinetic energy was converted to heat, and a little to sound. The ground and the ball were slightly warmed, and the air, and our eardrum, were slightly wiggled. The screen door example could be considered in the same way, and the ultimate slowing and stopping of a pendulum would be accounted for by a slight resistance to the motion of the pendulum by the air, and by a small degree of friction at the point of suspension of the pendulum, air resistance and friction being mechanisms for conversion of the coherent motion (mechanical energy) of the pendulum to the random atomic and molecular motion (thermal, or heat energy) of the air and the support for the pendulum. The idea that energy is conserved is one of the most powerful and useful insights of the human mind; it allows us to understand much that would