I know that moving my arm requires energy, and energy is not created or destroyed. I know the energy isn’t just disappearing but I know it’s not in my body still because I can run out of energy. Where does the energy I lose go?
In: Biology
The energy we use in our body generally comes from burning fat and sugars. Burning in this case means that you break the molecule apart. Both sugar and fat are a long strain of carbon atoms bound together (C-C-C-C-C-C, etc) and breaking the bonds between these carbons gives energy that our cells can use to move molecules around.
The now broken apart carbon we exhale as CO2, and the energy itself is used and ultimately we radiate as heat.
Heat is the simplest answer to what you are trying to ask, the metabolic activities in your cells which are responsible for essentially everything you do all generate heat as a by product and that heat is then lost to the surrounding system allowing the overall energy to remain the same
Mostly heat. Moving your arms isn’t a ridiculous amount of energy but it does take some. It’s why eventually if you start moving too much you’ll start sweating. You’re body is trying to lost the heat it gained by the movement and friction. Another minor source is the friction you cause with the air when you move your arms through it. All the small actions transfer energy to other things . It’s not lost, just transferred.
If you’re moving your muscles, some of the energy goes into the thing you’re moving.
Some goes into chemicals you synthesize in your body.
And the vast majority ends up as heat which we dump to the environment.
Isn’t fat stored energy?
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