No Sources of Renewable Energy Are To Be Found in Force Fields

I just sent an email to a young man who claims to have discovered and harnessed a new form of energy here on Earth.  Of course, I’m skeptical, but he’s a terrific fellow and I’m willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement so he can feel comfortable in telling me what this is all about.

In the meanwhile, I wrote:

You may be interested to know that the mistake most people have made when I hear stories like this is that they believe there is “energy” in gravity, or magnetism, or the electrostatic fields surrounding charged particles, etc.  Each of these entities is a different kind of force; force and energy aren’t the same thing. 

This can be confusing, though, because energy can be stored in the objects that the force acts on.  For example, gravity acts on objects with mass, and so, if I lift a brick against the force of the Earth’s gravity, I expend some chemical energy in my muscles, but now I have a brick that has more (potential) energy in it than it did before.  I do work, i.e., expend energy, resisting that gravitational force over a certain distance.  If I release the brick, that potential energy is transferred into kinetic energy. Again, the force acts over a distance.

An analogous story could be made for these other forces; the force of magnets affects other magnets, and the force of charged particles affects other charged particles. 

I hope this helps.