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] |
As I understand it, you want to promote a single definition of
work.
For that definition to be useful, we need to know what to do
wih it after we calculate it.
That would seem to me to require
knowing how it is related to the change in some independently
calculable energy of the system.
To determine that we need to
know the answers to my two questions.
The answer to this first question will, for instance, determine
whether or not work is related to changes in the bulk
translational kinetic energy of an object. Lots of people think
it is,
Consider for instance the result of pushing gently on an otherwise
freely floating balloon and doing a *thermodynamic* analysis of
its contents. In a case like this, we generally say that no work
has been done on the gas even though its bulk translational
kinetic energy changes.