re:Flow of energy

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

David Bowman says:

> I think we definitely *ought* to emphasize the fact that there is no such
> thing as "pure energy", but I would not go so far as to mount a crusade
> against against the language of energy flow.

I'm not opposed to what you suggest. I am opposed to the false concept
of "heat energy" and the corresponding "heat flow". It's the misuse of
the word "heat" I'm unhappiest about.

> > ...Richard Feynman means when he says there are no blocks. Until that simple
> > concept is mastered it is difficult to approach other abstract concepts,
> > notably entropy, which is on exactly the same conceptual footing. Entropy
> > is easily conceived once energy has been conceived properly.
>
> At the risk of opening a recently closed can of worms I would contend that
> entropy is an *easier* concept to understand than energy, and both energy
> and entropy are easier to understand than temperature (which depends for its
> real meaning on the prior meanings of both entropy and energy).

David refers here to the statistical interpretation of entropy. I agree,
but that is equivalent to the classical entropy (which is the quantity
that gives ill-prepared physicists the greatest difficulty), and that is
the entropy to which I refer. Classical energy and entropy are quite
comparable in their conceptual structure. I'm with Clausius on this one.

Leigh