Blog task – energy calculations

Choose one or two of the following areas from energy that would be worth practicing, and spend 20 minutes practising the related Isaac Physics questions:

• Thermal energy and heat capacity
• Latent heat
• Payback times
• Work, gravitational potential energy and power
• Kinetic energy
• Efficiency
• Power and the human body
• Springs and elastic deformation

Isaac Physics GCSE questions, alongside some helpful solving guidance, listed per topic can be found here: https://isaacphysics.org/pages/gcse_topic_index?stage=all

In your blog post, describe any problems you had with these questions.

Sometimes the hardest energy questions are the ones that involve two energy stores. 

For example:

Imagine 100 kg of water falling 979 m off the Angel Falls in Venezuela.  What is the decrease in the gravitational store in energy? The water at that top measures . At the bottom, as the water comes crashing down, its thermal store of energy increases. What is the expected temperature at the bottom?

Assume a specific heat capacity of .     

In your blog post either answer this question, or describe how you can help students to be able to answer this sort of synoptic question.