The amount of energy available to do work in a biological system is known as what?

The correct term for the amount of energy available to do work in a biological system is free energy. Free energy, often represented as Gibbs free energy in biological contexts, is the energy that can be harnessed to perform work during a chemical reaction. This concept is crucial in understanding how biological processes like metabolic reactions function, as it accounts for the energy that can be converted into useful work while taking into consideration the entropy of the system.

Potential energy refers to the stored energy in an object or system due to its position or configuration, while kinetic energy is the energy of motion. Both of these concepts are foundational in physics but do not directly relate to the specific energy available for work in biochemical processes. Activation energy, on the other hand, is the energy required to initiate a reaction, rather than the energy available for work after the reaction has occurred. Therefore, free energy is the most accurate term for describing the energy available to do work within biological systems.