Chemical Energy

Chemical Energy

Everything on this earth needs a great deal of energy to actually survive. One of the most common forms of energy is chemical energy. Chemical energy may be complex to understand and hear but it is vital for the survival of every living thing on earth.

In the human body, this type of energy is involved in all the living functions of a human being in order for a person to actually attain homeostasis and therefore live a peaceful life. Chemical energy involves bonds of ions, breakdown of substances, building up of substances and utilization of substances.

It may be hard at first to understand what chemical energy does to the human body but it is rest assured that without it, man would always experience an imbalance in his or her body system.

Metabolism is the sum of all the body processes that involves either the breakdown or builds up of chemical energy. There are two components of metabolism in the body. One is anabolism or the building up of substances to create energy for the body to use. The other one is the catabolism or it is the breakdown of substances to produce energy for the body to use.

The most important use of chemical energy in the human body is the cellular respiration. There are two basic forms of cellular respiration and that is the aerobic and anaerobic respiration. In aerobic respiration, the body makes use of oxygen and ATP or adenosine Triphosphate to breakdown sugar molecules so that the body can make use of the energy and the other one, the anaerobic, does not make use of oxygen for breakdown.

Constantly, chemical energy is being produced when substances are mixed up to form another substance. Even when one munches up food, the energy coming from foods need to be broken down by certain enzymes in the body so they can correspondingly be used in the body for consumption.

Complex sugars need chemical energy to be converted to simple sugars in order for the body to use it. Likewise, the energy of the body in the form of ATP must still be formed from ADP or adenosine diphosphate and added up with one phosphate molecule to form ATP or adenosine Triphosphate.

Another release of energy is through the process of heat combustion. The energy released in the process of heat combustion is the energy that becomes necessary for the formation of fuels. We know for a fact that fuels are also sources of chemical energy for a lot of machines that we use in the present living. We use them in ships, airplanes, hospital equipments, food machineries, and the likes.

Chemical energy is indeed useful for all of us who makes use of machines and equipments. Not only that, this type of energy is also necessary for our body to utilize all substances that we need to survive. Chemical energy may again be the source of headache for all those studying it, but little did we know that we find chemical energy even in the simplest things that happen to us every day.