Here is a question for the two John's; I'll offer some fuel that both should
be able to criticise, though, hopefully in different ways. I'm learning a
lot from this whole discussion and thank all participants.
It seems that there is a lot of debate as to what to call dW and dQ in the
1st law. All of which ends up as dU.
The debate has mostly centered on the dW part, and to whether or not it
ultimately ends up as thermalized energy or not. Let me offer another means
of partitioning, and I leave it wide open for criticism.
Instead of trying to decide if some activity was dW or not, lets decide if
it is dQ or not.
dQ arises from that part of an energy transfer between two systems in
contact(not to be viewed as a flow, but rather as an accounting terminology)
that occurs by virtue of a difference in temperature between the systems.
The transfer of energy that arises from any other means is dW; that is, the
complement to what is dQ.
In the above, I'm assuming no transfer of matter between the two systems in
contact.