Fiducia TogetherEnergy
Stores and transfers, conservation and efficiency. The vocabulary changed and the exams follow the new one.
Please note: This page explains a word or a process in education. It is general information about the system, the law and the guidance in England — not advice about your child, your school or your exam. If a decision is going against you, get advice from one of the free services we link to before you agree to anything or miss a deadline. If you are revising, check your own exam board's specification: boards word things differently and yours is the one that marks you.
What it is
Energy is measured in joules and is stored — kinetic, gravitational potential, elastic potential, chemical, thermal, nuclear — and transferred between stores mechanically, electrically, by heating or by radiation.
Where it applies
GCSE physics and combined science.
How it works
Energy is conserved: never created or destroyed, only transferred, though some is always dissipated to the surroundings as thermal energy.
Efficiency is useful output ÷ total input, as a decimal or percentage, and can never exceed 1.
How to use it in your work
Use the current vocabulary: energy stores and transfers, not "types of energy" and not "energy is lost". Say dissipated to the surroundings.
Never describe energy as "used up". It is transferred to a less useful store.
An efficiency over 100% means an arithmetic error — check before writing it.
Where to get help
Your teacher, your board's specification for the depth required at your tier, and Bitesize for the diagrams. The subject song runs the topics in order.
Revise this with a song
These are ours. We write revision songs because a lot of people remember a tune when they cannot remember a page, and because revising out loud in the kitchen beats staring at a highlighter.
- The Physics Song The GCSE physics specification, set to music.
Where to read more
Last reviewed 2026-08-28 by Fiducia Together · Next review due 2027-08-28
Please note: This page explains a word or a process in education. It is general information about the system, the law and the guidance in England — not advice about your child, your school or your exam. If a decision is going against you, get advice from one of the free services we link to before you agree to anything or miss a deadline. If you are revising, check your own exam board's specification: boards word things differently and yours is the one that marks you.