Scott,

I have a hard time understanding....energy I guess. Could you define energy? Is there a fixed amount of energy in the universe that can't be created or destroyed, that just changes form?

I ask these questions in regards to heat. In studying chemical reactions in basic college chemistry classes I clearly understood most of the reactions except when heat was involved. It's been a while but I seem to recall when a reaction took place that created heat, the atoms didn't equal out in the reaction. Is this correct or not?

Lets start from here and I'll expand as some of these questions are clear.