Nice to see you again! You’ve made it into the second week! We are happy that you are still with us. We hope that you now comprehend the basics of the mass balance. In this second week, you will learn everything about a new type of balance: the energy balance. You will be taught how to set up a complete energy balance with various different forms of energy.

You will see that energy is always conserved, but that one form of energy can be converted into another. The total energy is the sum of all the energy forms. Imagine a drawer closet used for storage. You can transfer the items from one drawer to another, but the total stored content of the closet is intact. We can perform some calculations on these conversions with the help of the energy balance.

After you have completed the first subsection, you will be able to recognise different forms of energy. You can also explain the meaning of internal energy (U), which is an essential symbol in thermodynamics. Furthermore, you will be able to apply the first law of thermodynamics, which is the law of the conservation of energy.

The first movie in this subsection is a Spark – you’ve also seen one in the previous week. We have made it in order to give you an idea of the concept that we are about to address. Our students had a lot of fun making them, we hope you do as well whilst watching them!