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Re: convert light into energy



While what Jim says is both true and important, many teachers refuse
to appreciate it. Slow down and think, folks! Energy is not a thing;
it is not real. It is just a number that we calculate by canon. It
has utility, indeed, but it has neither corporality nor reality, and
as such it cannot be expressed with purity either.


Help me here. In the same context, power is not a thing neither?

I've never thought about that before. You will have to define power,
preferably in a physical context, for me to start doing so. Several
quantities with the dimension energy/time are called power. If the
power you are thinking about is the rate of change of the energy of
a system (say the internal energy of a kettle of water placed on a
stove burner) then I would have to say that power is as abstract as
energy. The question of an arbitrary zero doesn't arise, of course,
so that can't be an exemplary non-property in the case of power.

I think that I would still have to say that power is not a thing
either, since ultimately it relies for its meaning on a change in
the energy of a system.

I don't quite understand the intent of the question. Does it matter
whether power is a thing or is not a thing? I have tried to show
that it does matter in the case of energy at a very fundamental
level. I will make a droll observation:

Thm: There is no such thing as pure power.

Proof: Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
(Lord John Emerich Edward Dalbert-Acton)
Corruption is a departure ... from what is pure or correct.
(Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary)

Therefore power is intrinsically impure. QED

Leigh