Energy and change

Physics Teacher

Volumn 45, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 88-92

  Hecht, Eugene ^a  

^a ADELPHI UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85006124256     PISSN: 0031921X     EISSN: 19434928     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1119/1.2432084     Document Type: Article

References (14)

1. R.P. Feynman, R.B. Leighton, and M. Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (Addison-Wesley, MA, 1963), p. 4-2.
2. Art Hobson, "Energy and work," Phys. Teach. 42, 260 (May 2004). Those who maintain that "energy is the ability to do work" might as well assert that "energy is the ability to melt snow."
3. J.C. Maxwell, Matter and Motion (Dover Pub., Mineola, NY, 1991), p. 56.
4. Albert Einstein, "On the relativity principle and the conclusions drawn from it," Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität und Elektronik 4, 411-462 (1907).
5. E. Fermi, Thermodynamics (Dover Pub., Mineola, NY, 1936), pp. 12-15.
6. C. Swartz in "Why use the work-energy theorem?" Am. J. Phys. 72, 1145 (Sept. 2004) agreed: "Work is just one way of transferring energy."
7. C. Mungan in "Work and energy," Am. J. Phys. 73, 197 (March 2005) concurred: "It is correct to define work as an energy transfer... ."
8. See H.B. Callen, Thermodynamics (Wiley, New York, 1962), p. 7.
9. E. Teller, Energy From Heaven and Earth (W.H. Freeman, New York, 1979), p. 9.
10. L. Sartori, Understanding Relativity (University of California Press, CA, 1996), pp. 213-219.
11. R. Mills (of gauge-theory fame) asserts that "the idea of potential energy is not truly fundamental ... ." See Space Time and Quanta (W.H. Freeman, New York, 1994), p. 152.
12. E. Hecht, Physics in Perspective (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1980), p. 158.
13. E. Hecht, Physics: Algebra/Trig, 3rd ed. (Brooks Cole, Pacific Grove, CA, 2003), p. 171 (1st ed. 1994, p. 278).
14. For a philosophical discussion of energy as change, see Scientific Realism, Selected Essays of Mario Bunge (Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 2001), p. 51.