Gravitational Potential Energy

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One of the ways that electricity is generated for use in our everyday lives is through hydroelectric power generation. This process involves using natural waterfalls or building dams to utilize the falling water to turn turbines. The reason why this process is possible is because of motion.
Motion is the conversion of movement into useable energy, in this case to power of the turbines and generate electricity. Motion is affected by displacement (the final difference in position), instantaneous initial velocity and instantaneous final velocity (the rate of change in position), acceleration (the rate of change of velocity) and time. Each of these variables are interrelated as one can be calculated as long as three others are known.
Newton’s
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Kinetic energy comes from the relationship between the mass of the object in motion and its velocity. This energy has to be converted from another form of energy as the law of conservation of energy states that energy can not be created or destroyed only converted into different forms and traded between systems. All energy is measured in Joules (J).
When we talk about waterfalls and dams, the energy’s original form is Gravitational Potential Energy (GPE) which is energy that comes from the potential all objects have to move due to gravity when they are not on the surface of the Earth. The GPE of an object is just the relationship between the object’s mass, the acceleration due to gravity which is a constant, and the height of the object above the surface of the
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Dams however do have some environmental impacts as when a dam is built, depending on the geography of the area, the river must be raised to create a reservoir and while the rivers become higher, it also grows wider and floods large areas of land. This flooding can cause the displacement of both humans and wildlife, completely changing the ecosystem of the area and destroying previously useable

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