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Pastimes : Neocon's Seminar Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: one_less who wrote (780)5/29/2003 4:28:27 PM
From: Tom Clarke  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 1112
 
Hate to sound dense, but wtf are you guys talking about?



To: one_less who wrote (780)5/30/2003 1:33:42 PM
From: Lazarus_Long  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1112
 
Hmmm.....

You are promoting here what was one of Richard Feynman's pet peeves: the promoting of the concept of "energy" as a thing distinct from the forms it actually takes. His point was that in terms of understanding and performing physics, the ideas that "energy does this" or "energy causes that" were of little use. What was of use was the understanding of the laws governing the specific forms of energy involved.

Their is in physics a generalized concept of "energy", but it takes specific forms such as

E = 1/2*m*v^2
E = mc^2
E = mgh

and many others. The forms are usually interconvertible through various physical mechanisms, but to understand what and how much you end up with, youy must still have some understanding of the specifics of each.