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Thermal energy



The rotational energy of a macroscopic body is easily populated
with far more than its "thermal share" of energy and it usually
does not readily trade that energy back and forth with other
internal modes of energy storage. That is, it is not subject to
"thermalization" on reasonable time scales. Thus the energy may
be internal, but it is not thermal. Consider a satellite.

It depends on the nature of the macroscopic body:
Joule's stirring experiment imparted macroscopic rotational energy to a
fluid in order that it then would become "thermalized".
I suppose the same thing happens on an astronomical spacetime scale to a
spiral galaxy!
It seems that only a rigid body effectively insulates this rotational energy
from thermalization. Is this the rule or the exception?

Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor