Re: why pseudowork (NOT)

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

I too found the discussion based on John's mind experiment illuminating.

As an innocent onlooker (who can often rush in where wise men...)
I noticed that John's gedanken stripped out numeric context.
Same speeds. mass one twice mass two.

I suspect that this is a disastrous gedanken format for students:
comes the revolution, and I will ensure that gedanken experiments
use redundant formulations...

"A 3 kg mass at 2 m/s collides with a 1 kg mass moving at 5 m/s in
the opposite direction. The 3 kg mass is stationary after the collision
and the 1 kg mass flies off.."

 Using this progression of primes may help to quash erroneous
mental formulations of how a result was arrived at.

Brought to you as a courtesy service of Nit Pickers Incorporated.

Brian


At 12:28 10/30/99 -0400, Robert Cohen wrote:
> The recent focus on precisely how one goes about creating a coefficient of
> restitution of 0.5 suggests to me that some people cannot calculate the
> work done by a force without first knowing what it is that is producing
> the force. ....
> In a related matter, I agree that part of the reason for the debate here
> is that different people are using different definitions of work....

> | Robert Cohen


> On Fri, 29 Oct 1999, John Mallinckrodt wrote:
...
> > This morning when I posted this question, I really had no intention of
> > getting sidetracked onto the not very interesting topic of momentum
> > conservation in one dimensional collisions.  ....
> > I am sorry that that more revealing question has been lost in
> > the noise.
brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>
Altus OK