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... Describing heat as a form of energy is certainly a gratuitous error
in a textbook. There is no good reason that piece of misinformation
should ever appear in a physics textbook. Who, pray tell, is valuably
informed by such a description? Is work, too, a "form of energy"?
Why could one not describe heating and working as processes by means
of which the energy of a system may be changed? Rather than introducing
ideas that are wrong in the context of physics, why not introduce correct
ideas?
... all I have said presumes that a suitable foundation for the
statements has been laid by introducing the concept of energy before
anything at all is said about heat. I suspect that too little attention
is usually paid to this preparation to make possible the understanding
of what heating is for the great majority of students.