Free energy may refer to:
In science:
- Thermodynamic free energy, the energy in a physical system that can be converted to do work, in particular:
- Helmholtz free energy, the energy that can be converted into work at a constant temperature and volume
- Work content, a related concept used in chemistry
- Gibbs free energy, the energy that can be converted into work at a uniform temperature and pressure throughout a system
- Variational free energy, a construct from Information theory that is used in Variational Bayesian methods
In pseudoscience:
- Free energy device, a hypothetical device that creates energy in a hypothetical isolated system, i.e. without any external input, thereby contradicting the laws of thermodynamics
- Free energy suppression, a conspiracy theory that advanced energy technologies are being suppressed by special interest groups
In music
- Free Energy (band), a 5-piece rock band on DFA Records
Famous quotes containing the words free and/or energy:
“Some are “industrious,” and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do,—work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate”
—Christopher Hampton (b. 1946)