ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Conversion of units of energy

Energy is like magic power that makes things work. Just like how you need vegetables to grow strong, energy helps machines and devices do their jobs.

But sometimes, we need to measure and compare how much energy things have. That's where units of energy come in!

Imagine you have a toy car and a real car. Both use energy to move. However, the toy car needs less energy because it's smaller and lighter. We can measure how much energy each car needs using a unit called joules (J).

But sometimes, people use different units to measure energy. For example, some people use calories (cal). This is a unit used to measure the energy in food.

So how do we convert units of energy? It's like changing dollars to euros or inches to centimeters. We need to use conversion factors.

A conversion factor is like a magical wand that helps us change from one unit to another. For example, 1 calorie is equal to 4.18 joules. So if we have 100 calories, we can use the conversion factor to find out how many joules that is.

100 calories x (4.18 joules/1 calorie) = 418 joules

Yay! Now we know that 100 calories is the same as 418 joules.

So to summarize: energy is like magic power, we measure it in units like joules or calories, and we can convert one unit to another using conversion factors.