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[Phys-L] E vs. KE/PE



On Thursday, October 20, 2005 4:04 PM, John M Clement wrote:

All energy should be E.
This gets rid of the KE, PE notations.

Anyway, I've gone back and forth on using E vs. KE/PE. I'd use E_p and
E_k but then I start to distinguish between E_{p,spring} and
E_{p,gravity} for and then all of a sudden I'm using E_{p,spring,i} and
E_{p,spring,f} and my subscripts are getting unwieldy. Is there a
pedagogical problem with using a lot of subscripts? Is it outweighed by
using a single letter for both KE and PE?

I use my own text so I am pretty free to follow whatever convention I
wish.

P.S. I am under no illusions about commercial success. Still, I have
some evidence that it has an impact on student learning and I believe
its benefit will become clearer as I continue to clean it up. I've used
many ideas discussed on this list, such as <trying> to be consistent
with notation.

____________________________________________________
Robert Cohen, Chair, Department of Physics
East Stroudsburg University; E. Stroudsburg, PA 18301
570-422-3428; www.esu.edu/~bbq