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Re: "non-transfer" of energy



Regarding BC's comment:

I think the point is -- is it the same energy? Obviously not, therefore, it is not
reifiable, as is say water or some other SUBSTANCE.

What is water but an ensemble of states possessing a lot of
excitations, i.e. quanta, of the electron and quark Dirac fields?
Why would excited states of these fields be any more or less real
than any other eigenstates of other observables, e.g. the
Hamiltonian? If a system's state is an eigenstate of a self-adjoint
physical observable, why isn't the correponding eigenvalue 'real'?
I think it is (in more than one way, even).

Does this idea apply to QM?
e.g. The quantum of EM radiation that does work on an electron and leaves at a new
angle. Is it the same photon?

It certainly is a different photon *state* after the interaction
since photon states are typically labeled by their momentum (among
other things). The system has executed a transition from one
particular photon state to another one.


bc who thinks he finally understands JG.

That's nice.

Why is energy not to be reified any more than any other physical
property? What is physical reality other than a collection of
physical properties that happen to exist?

As far as the question of whether or not energy or any other physical
concept flows, my opinion on this subject of what is necessary for it
to legitimately be said that some concept can and does 'flow' can be
found in the PHYS-L archives for February 27, 2002, under the subject
heading "Re: Entropy and states of matter". See
http://mailgate1.nau.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0202&L=phys-l&D=1&P=116822
for more details.

David Bowman

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.