ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

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Sure! So imagine you have a toy ball, and you want to play a game of catch with your friend. In order to do that, you have to throw the ball to your friend. Now, throwing the ball requires energy from your body - specifically, from your muscles.

In the same way, everything in the world requires energy in order to move or change. This includes everything from your body to the tiniest particles that make up matter. The energy that things have can come from different sources - for example, sunshine provides energy to plants, while food provides energy to animals (including people like you and me!).

One way that scientists measure energy is through something called heat. Heat is just another way of saying "how much energy is being transferred from one thing to another." When you touch a hot stove and feel a burning sensation, that's really just your body telling you that heat energy is flowing from the stove to your skin.

All of the energy in the world is interconnected in a big cycle. This means that energy can be gained or lost, but it never disappears completely. For example, when you eat food, you gain energy from it - but later on, you might use that energy to run around and play, which means you're giving some of it back to the world.

There are lots of different types of energy in the world - some examples include electrical energy (like the energy that powers your phone or computer), potential energy (like the energy a rollercoaster has when it's at the top of a hill), and kinetic energy (like the energy a ball has when it's moving through the air). But no matter what type of energy it is, it all comes back to the fact that everything in the world needs energy to do anything.
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