Bon mots: energy and energy conservation

"Energy and persistence conquer all things."
--Benjamin Franklin

"Energy isn't merely an enabler of things. In a real sense it is the thing itself. The flow of electricity, the digestion of food, the extraction of metal from ore: Energy is perpetually being consumed, transformed and put to new use. Such an intrinsic ingredient in everyday life obviously requires wise management. But setting energy policy gets ever more complicated because even as worldwide energy use skyrockets, we are discovering in greater detail how the deleterious byproducts of energy use can foul our habitat and hasten climate change."
--Thomas R. Casten and Phillip F. Schewe, "Getting the Most from Energy," American Scientist, vol. 97 no. 1, p. 26, January-February 2009.

"It is instructive to compare this [conservation of energy equation] to a student's back account--the balance does not change if there are no transfers into or out of the bank system. When there are transfers in the form of deposits, withdrawals, fees, interest, and checks written, however, the balance changes by exactly the net amount of money transferred by these processes."
--John W. Jewett, Jr., "Energy and the Confused Student IV: A Global Approach to Energy," The Physics Teacher, vol. 46, April 2008, p. 210

"The energy associated with a body consists of energy of rest and/or energy of motion. These are equivalently identified as mass energy (mc^2) and kinetic energy (KE). The various forms of PE are equivalent to variations in the mass of a system of interacting parts. Conservation of energy in all its applications can be expressed in terms of the total or partial transfer of mass and/or its transformation into KE and vice versa. On the cosmic scale, the conversion of energy into mass and mass back into energy is the grand dance of the universe."
--Eugene Hecht, "Energy Conservation Simplified," The Physics Teacher vol. 46, Feburary 2008, p. 80

"What is sometimes not appreciated is that the very essence of thermodynamics, the characteristic that distinguishes it from mechanics, is that invisible energy storage modes of macroscopic matter are important. Indeed, thermodynamics can be defined as the science of energy spreading within and between macroscopic objects. For blocks, inclined planes, and the like encountered in mechanics, internal storage modes are typically ignored. As friction becomes important pure mechanics morphs into thermodynamics, where internal energy storage modes are central."
      "Pure mechanics can be viewed as a form of constant-entropy reversible thermodynamics. In contrast, for any irreversible thermodynamics process, there is an increase of energy spreading over space, entailing increased energy and/or space, and increased temporal spreading over microstates."
--Harvey S. Leff, "Thermodynamics is Easy--I've Learned It Many Times," The Physics Teacher, vol. 45, no. 2, February 2007, p. 71

"For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy."
--Richard P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
--Albert Camus

"Every time you don't follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness."
--Shakti Gawain

"Energy is the essence of life. Every day you decide how you're going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal, and by maintaining focus."
--Oprah Winfrey, O Magazine, July 2003

"Energy is eternal delight."
--William Blake

"Engineering is the science of economy, of conserving the energy, kinetic and potential, provided and stored up by nature for the use of man. It is the business of engineering to utilize this energy to the best advantage, so that there may be the least possible waste."
--William A. Smith

"Crime is naught but misdirected energy."
--Emma Goldman, Anarchism

"Scientists have estimated that the energy given off during the Big Bang is roughly equal to 1CNRhK (Chuck Norris Roundhouse Kick)."
--chucknorrisfacts.com