The response to this previously posted question --
|Please vote on the following intergalactically important question:
|Should the internal energy of a system be written as U or as E?
-- both public and private -- has been unanimously in favor of my friend the U
But the E is also my friend and he tells me that he is a bit miffed -- Why,
he asks, does the U get both internal energy and potential energy? He
wonders why there is this great fondness for the U. Is this some sort of
pedantic momentum which extends from the first papers and textbooks on
thermodynamics? Or is there some good reason for this choice? And suppose
that one wants to talk about the potential energy contribution to the
internal energy, what then? Would it really unnerve people to use E as the
internal energy? After all Reif does.
Come to think about it, I wonder about this very important concern as well.
Just me and my letter friends over here in our little corner --