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]

R: Re: Energy before work" (was work done by friction)



----- Original Message -----
From: Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>
To: <PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU>
Sent: Monday, October 25, 1999 8:05 PM
Subject: Re: Energy before work" (was work done by friction)


No, I don't advocate abandoning the concept of work. I always
introduce energy before work, using Feynman's Chapter four as
the first item of business. I read the parable of Dennis and
his blocks to them in it entirety. Work is introduced later as
separate topic. I *never* touch what I consider to be a
damaging definition of energy as "the capacity to do work". I
consider it to be as odious as the definition of entropy as a
measure of the disorder of a system. Both definitions are, so
far as I understand the concepts, simply *wrong*.

The energy is a function of the state of a system.

I have to write, if only to say, You're absolutely right, mr. Palmer!

Paolo Cavallo