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🔋 Energy Stores and Transfers

Meet the five main energy stores, kinetic, gravitational, chemical, thermal, and elastic, and watch energy transfer between them in everyday things.

lessons

~15 min

to learn

🔬 Science

subject

Ages 6–12

level

Start the course →

What you’ll learn

Energy StoresName the main energy stores: kinetic, gravitational, chemical, thermal, and elastic.Energy is often held in stores ready for later. The main stores are kinetic (moving things), gravitational (things up high), chemical (food, fuel, batteries), thermal (hot things), and elastic (stretched or squashed springy things).
TransfersExplain that transfers move energy between stores by forces, heating, electricity, and waves.An energy transfer is energy moving from one store to another. It can happen through a moving force, heating, electricity, or waves like light and sound. A falling object transfers gravitational energy into kinetic energy, and a bouncing ball swaps between gravitational, kinetic, and elastic stores.
Everyday ExamplesIdentify the energy store in everyday objects and predict how it transfers.Everyday objects hold energy in different stores: a moving cyclist has kinetic, water behind a dam has gravitational, bread has chemical, hot tea has thermal, and a stretched catapult has elastic. Knowing the store helps predict what happens when the energy is released.

Questions this course answers

Which energy store does a moving object have?

A moving object holds energy in its kinetic store.

Where is chemical energy stored?

Chemical energy is stored in the bonds of food, fuel, and batteries.

A skier waiting at the top of a slope has a full store of which kind of energy?

Being lifted up high fills the gravitational store, so the skier at the top holds gravitational energy.

What is an energy transfer?

A transfer is energy moving from one store to another, such as gravitational to kinetic.

As a ball falls, which transfer happens?

As the ball falls, its gravitational store transfers into its kinetic store, speeding it up.

A stretched catapult holds which energy store?

A stretched, springy catapult holds energy in its elastic store.

Grounded in trusted sources

BBC Bitesize
The Physics Classroom
Britannica

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