Re: heat is a form of energy

["JACK L. URETSKY (C)1998; HEP DIVISION, ARGONNE NATIONAL LAB ARGONNE, IL 60439" <JLU@HEP.ANL.GOV>]

Hi Leigh-
        While I hate to find myself agreeing with the adressee:
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> Touch a warm copper block to a cold one.  "Heat" flows.  The "Heat flow"
> concept is a useful mental tool. Do you have an alternative set of
> concepts which can be understood by students/teachers in the lower grades?
> Or should we remove Thermo from curriculum material below the undergrad
> level?

If you want to use the analogy why can't you say "energy flows"? In
what way is it better to say "heat flows"? If there is a difference
(as the use of a different term would imply) what is it? Would you
similarly speak of the flow of work into a copper block being
pressed into a belt sander, or the flow of work into a descending
yo-yo?
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        After the touching, I can feel the hotted copper block getting
less hotted and the cold copper block getting more hotted.  The picture
that leaps into my childlike mind is when I poured water from a full glass
into an empty one.  I could see and feel the wet in the full glass and
the dry in the empty one, just like the hot from the hot block and the
cold from the unhot block.  In other words, I could practically feel the
hot flowing.
        Works for me!
                                Regards,
                                        Jack


        "I scored the next great triumph for science myself,
to wit, how the milk gets into the cow.  Both of us
had marveled over that mystery a long time.  We had
followed the cows around for years - that is, in the
daytime - but had never caught them drinking fluid of
that color."
                Mark Twain, Extract from Eve's
                Autobiography