How do you make a push?
Opening doors, playing baseball, running a race, practicing for a school
play—you really keep moving. How does your body keep going? What makes
you move?
You keep moving in almost the same way a car keeps running. Both you and
the car use forces—pushes and pulls—to move. And
those forces have to come from something. What you and the car need is
energy! Energy is what gives things the power that makes them work. It
makes the pushes and pulls happen.
Your body gets its energy from food. It takes a scrambled egg or a plate
of spaghetti and breaks it down, or digests it. The energy you get from
digested food makes the pushes and pulls that keep you moving.
A car engine burns gasoline to keep running. As the gasoline burns, it
gives off energy. That energy makes the pushes and pulls that turn the
wheels.
You can’t run on gasoline, and the car can’t run on scrambled eggs. But
you and the car really are using energy in much the same way. What’s
more, the energy you and the car use comes from the same place. It comes
from the sun!
Food is made from plants and animals. All plants and animals store up
energy from the sun as they live and grow, and you get that energy when
you eat.
Gasoline is made from oil. And oil comes from plants and animals, too.
Those plants and animals lived millions of years ago, storing up energy
from the sun just as living things do today. So when a car burns
gasoline, it’s using energy from the sun— energy that has been stored
inside the earth for millions of years.
