Re: refutation of the nonreality of energy

[John Denker <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 11:20 PM 8/4/99 -0700, Leigh Palmer wrote:
> Well, here it is. I hope someone is still reading me. Sometimes I
> don't think I'm getting through.

You're not.  Relatively little of your recent note was comprehensible to me.

Here are the clearest parts, which I will answer.

> > The typical person has more experience with stones than with pure energy,
> > but that doesn't make one more real than the other.  Have you ever tried to
> > land a plane, starting with too much energy?  A pilot's inventory of energy
> > is as real and as important as a mason's inventory of stones.
>
> Please tell me, what is "pure energy"? That is an entity with which
> I am unacquainted, and which I believe does not exist. Can you tell
> me how to prepare pure energy? If that can be done I will be most
> surprised!

Here's how:  take two airplanes, alike in every relevant aspect, except
that one of them has a lot more energy.  It could have more altitude and/or
more airspeed;  the form doesn't matter.  But you will find that trying to
land that airplane is very different from trying to land the other.  How do
I explain this to my students?  I tell them about energy.  It works for them.

If it doesn't work for you, well, that's your problem.  Please don't foist
your problems onto vulnerable students who will have to go out into the
real world where real people use local conservation of energy all the time.

> > Field energy is distributed in space, but not in "all" of space.  It must
> > be in very particular parts of space.  Energy is not just globally
> > conserved, it is *locally* conserved, which is a stronger statement.  That
> > is to say, it can't disappear from place A and reappear at place B without
> > crossing the boundary (any boundary we choose) between A and B.
>
> What is your evidence that it is "crossing"? (That is as bad as
> "flowing" in my book.)

By "crossing" I meant "flowing across" so we agree on at least this bit of
terminology!

> Can you detect its crossing without asking
> and answering the question "What changes in energy have occurred
> in the systems on either side of the boundary?"

Sometimes I can detect it;  usually in order to make my point all I need to
do is prevent it, perhaps by surrounding point A with a physical
energy-boundary such as a Dewar flask ("Thermos bottle").  In those rare
cases where there *appears* to be a violation of local conservation of
energy -- by energy-flow mysteriously penetrating the boundary -- then we
have a mystery of the highest order, the sort of paradox from which the
great advances of physics come.  In particular, I cite
  a) the discovery of cosmic rays, which was motivated by a
barrier-penetration mystery of this sort, and
  b) the discovery of neutrinos, ditto.