Re: energy, work, heat

[Jim Green <JMGreen@SISNA.COM>]

> My take on this is that
>  0) The vast majority of physicists believe that energy obeys a local
> conservation law.  That is, the change in total energy within a smallish
> volume is equal to the amount of energy transferred across the boundary of
> said volume.

Oh my, have we not learned anything re energy on this list???

"Energy " is not "transferred" -- across a boundary or anywhere else.
.....

> 3) The first law of thermo is another corollary to the energy-conservation
> law, where the transferred energy has been somewhat arbitrarily divided
> into "work", "heat", and "all other forms of energy".

It gets worse!  Neither "work" nor "heat" are "forms of energy" -- Good Grief!

Jim Green
mailto:JMGreen@sisna.com
http://users.sisna.com/jmgreen