Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-l] Configurational energy



On 10/17/2007 04:42 PM, Dan Crowe wrote:
John Denker wrote, in part:
"A name is not an explanation."

Names should at least not contradict explanations.

Should not?

In the world I live in, "should not" is not the same as
"do not".

Chocolate turtles are not made from turtles. Milk of
magnesia is not made from milk. A titmouse is not a mouse.
The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an
empire.

http://www.av8n.com/physics/weird-terminology.htm

It is easy to wish for better terminology, but this is usually
just an idle wish. Actually trying to change established terminology
is almost never worth the trouble.

Ideas are primary and fundamental; terminology is secondary.

I used to say that kinetic energy is the energy an object has due to
its motion, and that potential energy was the energy that it has due to
its position. These explanations were fairly common when I started
teaching physics 20 years ago. I found the latter explanation to be
inadequate, because students did not appreciate that potential energy
was associated with a system, rather than with a single object.
Potential energy is the energy associated with the configuration of a
system, not the position of a single object. This was why I started
using the phrase "configurational energy".

There are all sorts of problems with "kinetic energy" versus
whatever you call non-kinetic energy. Calling it "configurational
energy" doesn't begin to solve the problems.

Consider the thermally-isolated gas cylinder as shown on the
left of this figure
http://www.av8n.com/physics/img48/locrian.png

If I express the energy of the system as a function of the
position of the piston, is that a kinetic energy and/or a
potential energy and/or a configurational energy?