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Re: Energy

On Tue, 18 Sep 2001, John S. Denker wrote:

Flow of quantity X means that any increase in quantity X
in a given region is balanced by a simultaneous decrease
in quantity X in an adjacent region.

That's what flow means. That all it means. That is what it has always meant.

A nitpick perhaps: IMO "flow" requires that the increase in one
region be plausibly "a result of","required by", or at least
somehow "directly connected to" the decrease in the other. I would
not, for instance, be willing to say that energy "flows" from a
60 kg person in an elevator that is ascending at 5 m/s to another
60 kg person in an adjacent elevator that is descending at 5 m/s.

John Mallinckrodt mailto:ajm@csupomona.edu
Cal Poly Pomona http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm