Energy transfers in everyday appliances — AQA GCSE Physics
Test yourself on Energy transfers in everyday appliances with AQA GCSE practice questions.
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Energy transfers in everyday appliances explained
An appliance is a designed pathway: it takes energy supplied electrically and shifts it into whichever store the user wants.
Read the full explanation
A kettle moves energy to the thermal store of the water, an electric drill to the kinetic store of the rotating bit, and a lamp transfers it by light and by heating. The source is the chemical store of a battery or the mains supply, and the transfer happens because charge does work as it passes through the device. Almost no appliance transfers everything usefully - the exception is a resistive heater, whose useful store is the thermal store of the room, so it is treated as (near) 100% efficient. In every other appliance some energy is dissipated to the thermal store of the surroundings by resistance in the wires and friction in moving parts. Designers cut those losses, by insulating a kettle or oiling a motor, raising the efficiency but not to 100%.
Your focus
- Name the starting store, the pathway and the useful end store for a named appliance such as a kettle or a drill.
- Identify the wasted energy transfer in a given appliance and say where that energy ends up.
- Explain one design change that increases the useful share of the energy an appliance transfers.
Energy transfers in everyday appliances exam tips
Marking Points
- one mark for naming the store the energy is transferred from, such as the chemical store of the battery
- one mark for naming the useful store it is transferred to, such as a thermal or kinetic store
- one mark for naming the pathway, electrical work, heating or light
- one mark for identifying energy dissipated to the thermal store of the surroundings as the wasted share
Examiner Tips
- 💡Name the store at each end and the pathway between them; that structure earns the marks.
- 💡Use 'dissipated to the surroundings' as the standard phrase for wasted energy.
- 💡Match the useful store to the job of the appliance, since the useful output of a kettle is not light.
Common Mistakes
- writing 'electrical energy' as a store instead of naming electrical work as the pathway
- saying energy is lost rather than dissipated to the surroundings
- describing an appliance as converting energy into a new type rather than transferring it between stores
- saying a kettle is 100% efficient because it is a heater, ignoring the energy transferred to the kettle body and the surroundings