Free energy

Free energymay refer to:

Science

• Thermodynamic free energy, the total amount of energy in a physical system that can be converted to do work, in particular:
  • Helmholtz free energy, the amount of thermodynamic energy in a system that can be converted into work at a constant temperature and volume (called work content in chemistry)
  • Gibbs free energy, the amount of thermodynamic energy in a system that can be converted into work at a constant temperature and pressure
    • Free-energy relationship (or linear Gibbs energy relation) help understanding the reaction mechanism for a chemical reaction and makes it possible to predict reaction rates and equilibrium constants.
• Free energy perturbation, is a method based on statistical mechanics that is used in computational chemistry for computing free energy differences from molecular dynamics or Metropolis Monte Carlo simulations.

Conspiracy theory

• Free energy suppression, the notion that special interest groups deliberately suppress technologies that may provide energy at very little cost

Colloquially, some use the phrase in reference to energy with no or negligible feedstock cost (including solar power, telluric power, water power, and wind power).