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Re: "non-transfer" of energy



In a message dated 11/29/2002 12:44:30 AM Eastern Standard Time,
JMGreen@SISNA.COM writes:


The _only_ way to change the property of energy of a system is to do work
on that system.

It seems to me that
the clearest way to explain this process (at least to
the beginning student) is that the process of doing
work on the spring has increased its EPE and that this
energy came from whatever outside agent did the
stretching. No? John Barrere

Energy is not "transferred!" ie it does not "move" or "flow"

Just before you started the section on Thermo, you did the work/energy
principle - Why would you now abandon it???

Trying to say that some new mumbo jumbo is easier for the student to
understand than what s/he has just learned is beyond me.


It seems to me to be simply semantics. Some agent does work on the spring.
The agent experiences a decrease in energy, the spring experiences an
identical increase in energy. Why not say energy flowed from the agent to
the spring? It is not abandoning the work/energy principle any more than
treating a collision with conservation of momentum abandons the idea of
impulse/momentum.

Justin Parke
(who does not jump into the debate lightly)

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.