Free Energy

Real World Example

Imagine you're at a party with a plate full of delicious snacks, but your stomach can only hold so much food. Just like you have to choose which snacks to eat because of your limited stomach capacity, free energy in a system represents the energy that can be used to do useful work, while the rest is constrained by the system's limitations. In this analogy, your stomach capacity is like the constraints in a system, the snacks are the total energy available, and your choices of what to eat represent the free energy—the energy available to do work.