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Practically the end of energy as 'stuff'. Palmer and Green



Hi Leigh,
I am at the passage where "there are no blocks". Will that convince
me? We shall soon know. I believe you are right but you have not
expressed your view clearly and you haven't actually proven anything that
will convince an old-time mathematician. I found some interesting words
in the dictionary. What do you think of these locutions?
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Dictionary words for going out: efflux, effusion, effluent, efferent,
excrete, excurrent, ejection, egesta, excrete, exothermia, expel, exude.
One can say "thermal efflux", or "thermal efferent", or "surface
exothermia", etc. for "heat out" . Likewise we have influx, inflow,
influent, ingoing, ingression, inject, injection, insert, insertion,
intake, introduce, introduction, intromit (many are very common words).
We could say "thermal influx", or "thermal influent", or "surface
endothermia" , "thermal inflow". How about "reversible thermal
intromission from a high-temperature reservoir" is carried out on the
"high-temperature isotherm" of a Carnot cycle? Now, "eferrent" means
carried out, so it contains no direct allusion to 'caloric' if you see it
'my way'. 'Thermal energy is introduced to the control volume by
injection at the surface' is also pretty far from direct allusion to
'stuff'. We can inject an abstraction.
So, instead of "adding heat" (bad) or even "adding thermal energy by
heating", we say, "By 'heat_in' we refer to the transfer of thermal
energy into the CV from a thermal reservoir whose temperature is
infinitesimally higher than the temperature at the control surface where
the 'thermal injection' is carried out reversibly, i.e., over an
infinitesimal temperature difference and infinitely slowly. We shall
dispense with the extra verbiage in the sequel and say, simply,
'heat_in'. Until much later, we shall always mean 'reversible heat
transfer' when we employ the term
'heat'."*****************************************************************************I
wrote a draft of this to Ludwik earlier. You deserve a little peace and
quiet. I know damn well you're right. I just can't figure out what is
so completely different about energy and charge. Don't we have higher
energy states in any given assemblage of atoms and molecules? Even if
they are just 'solutions' to the SWE, they represent stuff to me. I
should be able to inspect these field properties and say that this one is
high-energy and that one is not if I am some sort of Maxwellian demon who
can see that stuff. The interstices between putative matter are filled
with putative radiation, which also can be distinguished as to its energy
level by a sufficiently sensitive intelligence - modulo uncertainty, can
it not? I really am thinking Bohr Model, but I say to myself, "It's as
though it were the Bohr Model." What's all this Pauli exclusion stuff
then? Boy, I sure haven't learned much physics, have I? Physics, to
me, is Fourier transform in the time dimension. Look at first term in
asymptotic expansion. Make an ansatz for the ODE. Hope for Lipschitz
continuity. Or identify the Hopf bifurcation and try to get the maximum
yield on a periodic solution. Why is the Jacobean so GDed
ill-conditioned? It's the computer, isn't it? Biggest waste of time
since time began, if time had a beginning.
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That's about it. This might satisfy someone. Maybe you. I think Jim
and Leigh are right (I said to Ludwik), but they have not explained their
position properly - yet!" With luck I might say it right before they
do. But, it may sound just like them to the next guy. Oh, well.Thanks
for all your trouble, Leigh, and goodnight / Tom
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P.S. I have spent the night trying to find the wavelength corresponding
to the average radiative flux in Plank's Radiation Law at a particular
temperature. (I am not so agile as I once was at long (simple-minded)
calculations with many sign changes that I always get wrong.) Also,
Tuesday is over!
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Now radiative flux is a flux that everyone calls a flux and it is
thermal, is it not? It is energy flow mediated by photons, isn't it?
In fact, if we wish to rule out 'action-at-a-distance', all physical
change must be mediated by the movement of some particle or wave, which
wave must be represented by a particle or packet or something that
travels between the region in E^3 where U is getting greater, say, and
the region where it is growing less - as in the cannon and motor and the
shaft that conducts power, mediated by an unseen particle??? Isn't
wave-particle duality postulated at all levels?