Re: heat is a form of energy

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, John Denker wrote:

> At 02:12 PM 9/8/99 +0800, Alvin V. Flores wrote:
> > hello there. we're currently working on a revised curriculum for the 21st
> > century from grades 1 to 9. one of our main themes is on energy.
> >
> > would it be correct to say that heat is a form of energy ?
>
> Yes.  I cannot imagine any scientific or pedagogical reasons to say
> anything else.


Here's a perspective that I don't recall seeing in the longrunning "heat"
debate...



When GR took the reins from Newtonian Mechanics early this century,
Newton's Laws became a special case of a more general model.  In other
words, they became "wrong".  At least it became wrong to apply them
universally as had been done before this change.  Yet Newton's Laws
remained just as useful in everyday application.  As long as we know their
limits; as long as we know just when to switch into "GR-think", there are
no problems.  Contemporary scientists don't hate Newton's laws or consider
them to be wrong, they just see that they apply to a limited domain.

 From what I understand of the origin of the "heat" concept, its overall
history is almost identical to the Newton/Einstein paradigm shift.
"Phlogiston" was originally the ruling concept. (Or might that be
'negative phlogiston', where a hot object has more of the stuff?)  When it
was found that the laws of "Phlogistonian Dynamics" were violated during
chemical reactions, all hell broke loose.  The end result unfortunately
was a bit destructive: many researchers felt betrayed by the Phlogistonian
paradigm (or 'religion').  Not only did they embrace the rapidly growing
modern Thermodynamics, they also became crusaders against Phlogiston.
This is quite a bit like having a GR-believer hate Newton's laws:
insisting that everything should be described directly in terms of GR
without bringing up any of this archaic Newtonian blasphemy if you please.
The less radical researcher might instead just continue to use Newton.
Then, if a contradiction between Newton and General Relativity arose,
Einstein would win.  :)

If "Phlogiston" is now called "Heat", then Phlogiston still applies to the
everyday world.  "Heat flow" works fine as long as we remain aware of its
limits. If chemical reactions are present, or if the Entropy concepts
cannot be avoided, then we must abandon "Heat-think" and fall back to the
more general "Thermo-think".

This being the case, our 'religious' state would be that of the
recently-converted Christians of ancient England.  We would rely upon all
the concepts and ceremonies of Paganism in everyday life, but we would
regard them as incomplete and having a limited range of application.
Whenever we encountered a contradiction between Paganism and Christianity,
Jesus would win!  :)

In coming centuries, I expect that "heat flow" will gradually die away,
and mankind will learn to think exclusively in terms of Thermodynamics.
Yet at present, I see that such a state is limited to the experts.  It
takes quite a bit of effort to become a "pure Christian" who has
eliminated all traces of "Paganism" from his/her soul.  Those who have
done so can act as master teachers: the leaders on the one true path.
However, those who have eliminated all traces of "Heat" from their
hearts should not look down on the rest of us.  Teachers should not use
their enlightened state to inflate their egos, instead they should
remember their roots, and see that they were recently in the same state of
ignorance as the teeming masses of undergraduates and high school students
surrounding them.


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