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Re: non-conservation

On Thursday, Sep 30, 2004, at 13:03 America/New_York, John Denker wrote:

Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

How can a claim about a violation of the
first law be taken seriously?

Prior to Rumford (1797), people thought heat was a conserved
quantity unto itself.

Prior to Einstein (1905), people thought mass was a conserved
quantity unto itself.

Prior to Wu (1956), people thought parity was conserved.

LET ME MENTION ANOTHER WELL KNOWN EPISODE
(OR IS IT ONLY A LEGEND?). NIELS BOHR CONSIDERED
A POSSIBILITY THAT ENERGY IS NOT CONSERVED IN
THE MICRO-WORLD. THAT WAS HIS REACTION TO A
REPORT FROM CALORIMETRISTS THAT THE AMOUNT
OF HEAT PRODUCED BY A BETA-RADIOACTIVE SOURCE
WAS SMALLER THAN EXPECTED. PAULI REACTED
DIFFERENTLY; HE INVENTED NEUTRINOS.

AN EARLIER EPISODE GOES BACK TO WHEN
PIERRE CURIE DISCOVERED THAT RADIUM WAS
CONSTANTLY SLIGHTLY WARMER THAT THE AIR
AROUND. HE DID NOT QUESTION THE FIRST LAW.
THE PAPER HE AND LABORDE PUBLISHED IN 1903
ENDS IN THAT WAY:

"ONE GRAM-ATOM OF RADIUM (225 G.) WOULD
DEVELOP EACH HOUR 22,500 CALORIES . . . THE
CONTINUING DEVELOPMENT OF SUCH A QUANTITY
OF HEAT CANNOT BE EXPLAINED BY AN ORDINARY
CHEMICAL TRANSFORMATION. IF WE SEEK THE
ORIGIN OF THE PRODUCTION OF HEAT IN AN INTERNAL
TRANSFORMATION , THIS TRANSFORMATION MUST BE
OF A MORE PROFOUND NATURE AND MUST BE DUE
TO A MODIFICATION OF THE ATOM OF RADIUM ITSELF.
NEVERTHELESS, SUCH TRANSFORMATION, IF IT
EXISTS, PROCEEDS WITH EXTREME SLOWNESS."

NOTE THAT THIS SPECULATION WAS PUBLISHED
LONG BEFORE THE DISCOVERY OF ALPHA DECAY
OF ATOMIC NUCLEI. WHY WAS MARIE CURIE NOT
THE COAUTHOR OF THIS PAPER? IT WAS PUBLISHED
IN 'COMPTES RENDUS DE L'ACADEMIE DES
SCIENCES, PARIS, 1903, 136: 673-675 (16 MARCH).'


As a practical issue, in my judgement a tabletop experiment is
probably not the optimal approach for persuasively demonstrating
non-conservation of energy. HOWEVER... out of respect for the
scientific process, I insist on keeping open the possibility in
principle.

ME TOO.

I was thinking about a student experiment.

That doesn't change the story. There is no law prohibiting
students from obtaining valid, important, heretical results.

BUT STUDENTS ARE OFTEN ASKED TO PERFORM
EXPERIMENTS THAT ARE NOT WORTH PERFORMING
IN THE CONTEXT OF EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN.

===========================

As an aside, I note with hearty approval that Ludwik considers
"the first law" to be synonymous with "conservation of energy",
nothing more, nothing less. Not everybody does, but they should.
(The alternative is to conflate the first law with various
corollaries involving derivatives, with considerable loss of
generality.)

THE CHOICE OF WORDS WAS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.
I AM NOT AWARE OF NUANCES IMPLIED BY JOHN.
LUDWIK KOWALSKI