As a child, you probably spent some time on playgrounds. Every once in a while, you would run across a slide that you just couldn't slide down. Instead of having a quick ride down it, you would have to slowly scoot your way to the bottom. What was stopping you from sliding down is a force called friction. This force is an example of a type of force we call a nonconservative force.
In a nonconservative force, the energy within a system is not maintained, but is instead dissipated out of the system. For this reason, these forces are also known as dissipative forces. One common way this energy is dissipated is through heat, and friction is a good example of this. You can experience this yourself by simply taking your hands and rubbing them together. The heat you will start to feel is the energy being given off by the friction between your two hands.
Path DependenceOne way we can tell that a force is nonconservative is to see if it is path dependent. Unlike with conservative forces, the work done by a nonconservative force on an object depends on the route the object travels. To understand this, let's imagine you're pushing a box across a floor from one side of the floor to the other at a constant speed. Would you rather push the box in a straight line or in a zig-zag pattern? Most people will choose to push the box in a straight line. They know instinctively that this will take less work than the zig-zag pattern, but why is that? That's because to keep the box moving at a constant speed, you are fighting against friction. The box that travels the longer path has to fight against more friction. Since more friction acts on the box on the zig-zag path than the straight path, this means that friction is a path-dependent force.