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Re: heat is a form of energy



At 17:32 -0700 9/9/99, David Bowman wrote:
Regarding:

Some
teachers even try to smooth this over by introducing the "flow
of entropy" as a helpful concept!

This would not help any understanding of entropy. Fortunately, I have
not encountered this teaching technique.

When I wrote this last comment I meant that I had not encountered
teachers or professors making an appeal to the flow of entropy to help
explain the concept of entropy. I did not mean to suggest or imply that
textbooks didn't ever use the concept of entropy flow. However, thermo
books with an engineering slant tend to use entropy flow a lot more than
physics-oriented stat mech books though (in spite of Schroeder's cartoon).

All the texts I named before are physics oriented. A book by Herbert
Callen with which I am unfamiliar, but which has been recommended
highly to me by physicist colleagues, goes so far as to define a
vector entropy current density and write continuity equations for it.
Sears, Riedi, and Reif seem to have failed to employ this particular
"aid" to conceptual grasp. All three of them are physically oriented.
I have taught from Reif for three decades without feeling the lack of
that particular concept.

It is clear to me that the concept of entropy flow is very common.
I'm glad you agree with me that it is of no help in teching the
concept. I feel that it can do harm, just as the flow of energy can
do harm if not introduced with proper caveats.

Leigh