Kinetic Energy And Potential Energy Essay

Kinetic and potential energy play an essential role in the segments or phases in a heating or cooling graph representing an exothermic or endothermic process. Kinetic energy is the energy of a system that is in motion of the particles in the system. Potential energy is the energy of a system in which it represents the arrangement of the particles of the system. Kinetic energy and potential energy never increase or decrease at the same time, however, when one energy is changing the other remains constant. During a phase change, the potential energy either increases or decreases while the kinetic energy will remain the same. On the other hand, kinetic energy changes during one phase as the potential energy remains constant. Furthermore, an exothermic process is a process in which the system releases heat into the surrounding. On the contrary, the endothermic …show more content…
For example, when the process is endothermic, the kinetic energy increases since the temperature increases, but remains constant at a phase change. However, during an exothermic process the kinetic energy decreases along with the temperature and during a phase change the energy and temperature will remain constant. The kinetic energy is opposite for each of the curves because as the kinetic energy decreases during the exothermic process causing the number of molecules of the products to decrease as they come closer. The potential energy remains constant for both graphs since the temperature either increases or decreases, while the kinetic energy increases for an endothermic process and decreases for an exothermic process. As the heating curve (graph A) is represented in the graph the difference in each of the phases can be seen through it like the cooling curve (graph B) where the graph represents very clearly the phases and their