If one takes firewood to the top of a hill and burns it there, does the firewood’s gravitational energy disappear? — V
When you carry the firewood up the hill, you transfer energy to it and increase its gravitational potential energy. When you then burn the wood, you seem to make this energy disappear. After all, there doesn’t appear to be any difference between burning wood in the valley and burning wood on the top of the hill. The wood is gone either way.
But appearances can be deceiving. Since energy is a conserved quantity, the energy that you invest in the firewood can’t disappear. It simply becomes difficult to find because it is dispersed in the burned gases that were once the wood.
To find that energy, imagine compressing the burned gases into a small container to make their weight more noticeable and reduces buoyant effects due to the atmosphere. You could then carry those burned gases, which include all of the firewood’s atoms, back down the hill. As you descended, the container of burned gases would transfer its gravitational potential energy to you.
I’ve swept a number of details under the rug, such as the fact that many of the oxygen atoms in your container were originally part of the atmosphere rather than the log. But even when all those details are taken into account, the answer is the same: the firewood’s gravitational energy doesn’t disappear, it just gets more difficult to find.