Re: 'heat'

[paul o johnson <pojhome@FLASH.NET>]

Chuck Britton wrote:

> Is there anyone on this illustrious list who actually TEACHES
> thermodynamics and is careful to avoid the four letter Anglo-Saxon term
> 'heat'?
>
> I would say that such a thermo instructor is being  'Pedagogically
> Correct' and would not mean it as a complement.

Let's hear it for Chuck.

What's wrong with heat? All my English-speaking students think they know
what it means. I spend a right smart amount of time explaining to my
students that physics jargon is different from English words they may know.
In physics, the word "body" doesn't necessarily mean your flesh and bones;
the word "normal" absolutely doesn't mean the absence of strangeness; and
the word "mean" doesn't usually signify the absence of niceness.

Earlier in the first semester when we first introduce the concept of
energy, we usually include heat as one of its many forms. By the time we
get to temperature and heat at the end of that semester, we should be ready
to use the analogy between heat and work.

Neither term represents the "energy content" in a substance or object, they
both represent energy only while it is in transit. Work is mechanical
energy in transit, heat is thermal energy in transit. After the energy is
no longer in transit, we call it something else.

poj