Energy Stores and Transfers
Your body, a stretched rubber band, and a nuclear power station all have one thing in common - they're energy storage systems waiting to transfer their power to something else.
Energy stores are like different types of batteries in the world around you. Kinetic energy powers moving objects, gravitational potential energy exists in anything with height, elastic potential energy sits in stretched or squashed things, and thermal energy relates to temperature. Chemical, nuclear, magnetic, and electrostatic energy complete the set.
Energy always follows one golden rule: it can't be created or destroyed, only transferred between stores. However, not all transfers are useful - dissipated energy gets wasted as heat through friction. That's where efficiency comes in, calculated as useful output divided by total input.
Thermal insulation in buildings works by using materials with low conductivity to reduce heat transfer rates. The thicker your walls and the better your insulators, the less energy (and money) you'll waste heating your home.
Remember: All energy eventually ends up as heat in the surroundings - that's why machines get warm when they work!