Energy Storage

How to draw energy schema (the pie charts):

1. Define your system. What objects are you going to include. Think carefully before deciding to exclude the environment (air, surfaces, etc.) from your chart. Oftentimes this obscures the energy transfers we are most interested in.

2. Choose snapshots at critical times in the process that is occurring. Each pie chart represents the different places where the energy is stored.

3. If the total energy in the system is constant, the entire pie chart will have the same diameter throughout. Increase or decrease the diameter however you think if the total energy in the system is changing.

4. Don't forget dissipated energy!

11 March 2004