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Re: work, energy, etc



At 05:23 AM 10/11/01 -0700, John Barrer wrote:
If one abandons the notion of different FORMS or KINDS
of energy and instead thinks of different storage
MODES for the energy in a system, much clarity is
achieved for BEGINNING students.

Forms... Kinds... Modes... Seems like hair-splitting to me. "Mode of
energy" is not a concept students are born knowing. How are we going to
define it? Are we going to define it as a "form of energy"? Or ?????

And then, dispensing
with WORK and ENERGY as different "things", one simply
discusses the mechanism for energy transfer into or
out of a SYSTEM

Focusing on how to subdivide the transfers is just a bad idea. See
http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/thermo-laws.htm
for a discussion of why this is a bad idea, and for constructive alternatives.

- workING if the transfer mechanism is
mechanical (on the macro scale), heatING if the the
transfer mechanism is thermal.

Changing the phrasing from noun to verb doesn't turn a bad idea into a good
idea.

I think this (Modeling)
approach does a much better job of helping beginning
students learn the fundamental concepts.

Is there any reason for thinking so?

Should we tell beginning English students to say "aint" and "they is",
knowing that it is bad English, and hoping that they will unlearn it
later? By the same token, what is the point of teaching beginning students
bad physics, for no discernible reason, when better approaches are available?

And you never
have to use the hated word "flow" to describe the
processes.

Hatred is not a substitute for careful reasoning. If flow is unphysical,
somebody needs to explain why. See also
http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/conservative-flow.htm