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Re: [Phys-l] order of topics (was Newton's first law)



Quoting John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>:

Indeed one perfectly reasonable starting point doesn't mention
forces at all, but rather concentrates on /energy/.

Right.

Perhaps conservation of energy could serve to introduce the first law of motion, with its tendency being approached in the limit of no interactions. This is approached on short time scales, e.g., a brand new human artifact traveling through the not-very-dense interstellar void. The second law of thermodynamics might be similarly introduced, with its tendency being approached in the limit of infinite interactions, such as on deep time scales like the formation of planets over billions of years. Could assigning a residence time to kinetic energy then serve to explain entropy generation?

Radtke, Jeff. Residence time of momentum, energy and other conserved quantities:Metrics for engineered system performance and reversibility [Internet]. Version 41. Knol. 2011 Apr 8. Available from: http://knol.google.com/k/jeff-radtke/residence-time-of-momentum-energy-and/9h3f3kub8bcr/8.

--
Jeff Radtke
jr@reflectionimaging.com
jr@cloudchambers.com