by Gordon Ettie
“Energy is not lost or destroyed, it is merely transferred from one party to the next.” – Sir Isaac Newton
In a discussion of energy the basic understanding revolves around the fact that there are three laws. These are simple laws dealing with energy and can be defined as follows:
First Law
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. This means that you can’t make energy out of nothing— the total amount of energy in the universe is a constant. (Please note that this applies to a closed system – the Earth is not a closed system, the Earth receives energy all the time from the Sun).