Work of breathing Work of breathing Work of breathing (WOB) is the energy expended to inhale and exhale a breathing gas. It is usually expressed as work per unit volume, for example, joules/litre, or as a work rate (power), such as joules/min or equivalent units, as it is not particularly useful without a reference to volume or time. It can be calculated in terms of the pulmonary pressure multiplied by the change in pulmonary volume, or in terms of the oxygen consumption attributable to breathing. In a normal resting state the work of breathing constitutes about 5% of the total body oxygen consumption.
Internal energy density called "specific internal energy" which is internal energy per unit of mass (kilogram) of the system in question. The SI unit of specific internal energy is J/kg. If the specific internal energy is expressed relative to units of amount of substance (mol), then it is referred to as "molar internal energy" and the unit is J/mol. From the standpoint of statistical mechanics, the internal energy is equal to the ensemble average of the sum of the microscopic kinetic and potential energies of the system. The internal energy, , expresses the thermodynamics of a system in the "energy-language", or in