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Re: heat is not a noun

From "Some Irreverant Thoughts About Heat" in the Atmospheric
Thermodynamics book by Bohren and Albrecht, pages 24-28.

"It is very easy to deal with the definition of heat: It does not exist.
Why waste time and effort defining something that does not exist? Heating,
however, is the name of a macroscopic process in which the internal energy
of a system changes by virtue of a temperature difference between it and
its surroundings. Why 'macroscopic'? Because we invoked temperature, a
macroscopic quantity. There is no such thing as the temperature of a
single molecule, only a collection of many molecules."
"When you grasp that heating is a way of doing something and abandon all
attempts to identify heat as an entity, especially a vague, metaphysical,
even paranormal entity, you can think more clearly about thermodynamic
problems. We know of no examples in which invoking a mythical substance
called heat leads to increased physical understanding."


And once again, this list will be drawn into the HEAT of battle!

(Personally, I'm quite attached to these four letter Anglo-Saxonisms)

At 7:42 PM -0700 1/30/01, Larry Smith, you wrote about heat is not a noun:


Would it not warm Jim Green's heart to know that Robert H. Romer, editor of
AJP has an editorial in the Feb 2001 issue entitled "Heat is Not a Noun"?
It starts out: "Let's strike a blow for clear thinking by ridding the
English language of the word heat as a noun.... Heat is not a substance."

<http://ojps.aip.org/journal_cgi/dbt?KEY=AJPIAS&Volume=CURVOL&Issue=C
URISS#MAJOR2>

Larry

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