Re: example of alternate form of 1st law

["RAUBER, JOEL" <JOEL_RAUBER@SDSTATE.EDU>]

Carl wrote in part:
> 3. Stealing from the concurrent N#3 thread, invoke gravitons and
> somehow talk about doing work on gravitons. I would be glad to hear
> from someone more qualified than I to comment on whether "work done
> on gravitons" is a meaningful concept and if so what it means.
> --

I'm not sure if I'm more qualified, but here are my off the cuff 2 cents
worth of thinking.

The moment you start speaking of gravitons (photons in E&M) we are more or
less immediately speaking in terms of Quantum Field Theories and one needs
to start being very very careful not to treat these things as points
particles (except for certain specific situations, e.g. Compton scattering
for photons).  These particles are excitations of the relevant quantized
fields, which I'd interpret as not really avoiding the field concept in
trying to analyze the problem.

Are there any more erudite opinions out there in Phys-L land?