Time for a Physics Lesson

I realize that "learn more about physics" was not at the top of anyone's "to-do list.  Before you go back to the important things like painting your nails, scrubbing the toilet or watching Jerry Springer, give me a few minutes of your time.  You might be pleasantly surprised.  Besides, you already know there are going to be a bunch of fights, several involving women getting their clothes torn off, and the guy they are fighting over is skinny, ugly and missing half his teeth.

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."
"Energy can not be created or destroyed, only altered in form"
"E=MC²"

These are all ways of saying the same thing.  Everything from the electricity running your computer to the forgotten, disgusting produce in the bottom of your refrigerator can be described in terms of energy.  As Albert Einstein so elegantly pointed out, matter is just another form of energy.  The useful (and damn clever) part is that the better you understand the energy balances (my phrase) involved, the better you understand everything.

There are many different types of energy, for a refresher, here are some brief explanations:

Kinetic Energy(KE):  Motion and Mass.  A moving vehicle has a lot of kinetic energy.  Increase the speed, increase KE.  A heavier vehicle has more KE than a lighter vehicle moving at the same speed.

Potential Energy(PE):  Position and Mass.  A baseball sitting on the ground has less PE than a baseball at shoulder height.  A bowling ball at shoulder height has more PE than a baseball.

Chemical Energy(CE):  When you start a fire, you're converting mass (the wood) into energy (heat and light).  Chemical reactivity determines CE.  CE is really just another form of PE, and it's the one that gives us mass equals energy.  Wood has less CE than gasoline, which has less CE than plutonium.

Boring review over with, time to have a little bit of fun with this.  One of the never-ending political points involves drilling rights in protected areas.  The oil companies want those drilling rights, the tree huggers (I prefer birch or sycamore) want to protect the environment.  All the rest of us want cheaper gasoline and an independence from foreign oil.  The question is:  Will opening up currently closed areas to drilling give us cheaper gas and oil independence?  The answer can be found by figuring out the energy balance.

Oil in the barrel has more potential energy than oil in the ground, for the simple reason that you have to use energy to get the oil from the ground to the barrel.  The farther underground and the more inaccessible the terrain, the lower the PE.  The Middle East is an area where vast oil reserves are easily accessible.  Of course we have to use energy to get the oil from Saudi Arabia to our shores, but it takes much less energy to move horizontally than it does to move vertically.  Try running 100 yards, then try running up 30 flights of stairs.

Getting the oil in the barrel from a currently protected site requires a great deal of energy (energy = money).  Roads have to be built and land must be cleared.  Equipment must be transported, erected, maintained and operated.  People have to be moved, fed and paid.  Lawyers and activists have to be dealt with, and all this is money spent before drilling begins.  If these untapped oil reserves were just 50 feet below ground then the oil would have more PE and more value to the oil companies, but much of the oil is thousands of feet down, making it worth less.

For the oil companies, their PE is determined by the price of oil, how much oil they sell and how much oil they have to sell.  If the price of oil goes down, it's bad for the oil company.  A significant increase in readily available domestic oil would reduce the price of oil.  Any increase in our oil independence would reduce the price of oil.  This means that the more oil we pump out from U.S. sources, the less money the oil companies make.  What the oil companies want is the guarantee of access to another source of oil if we are somehow cut off from the Middle East supply.

So, the next time you hear some politician blathering on about opening up more areas for drilling, understand that there is absolutely no benefit to you or to the country (we, the country already have control of that oil), it is only to the future benefit of the oil companies.

But wait!  There's more!

Even relationships can be described in terms of energy balance.  If you build a fire with wood, it gives you heat for a long time.  The more energy you add to the fire, the hotter and bigger it becomes.  As long as you tend the fire, it will be there for you.  Only when you neglect it does it burn out.  If you build a fire with gasoline, it's very exciting and extremely hot, but it quickly burns out and leaves you scarred.  Keep your fires burning.