...on Physics from Netscape Boards

H G Lundahl wrote:
Quote from Rita, Liberal education thread:

"It would upset me because they would be taking up valuable time in a science class to discuss something that isn't science related (you forget that I am a physicist and know what is science and what is pseudo-science).

Also, if your kid is coming home telling you that he evolved from a monkey, then there is a problem with the ability of the teacher or your kid misunderstood.

I will not get into that 'know the truth' bullshit."

So knowing the truth is bullshit, but knowing what is science and what is pseudoscience is somehow not bullshit? Tell me, Rita, tell this "pre-enlightenment" scholastic (in point of literal fact: post-enlightenment, but VoP was thinking about type rather than actual dates): granted that only truth can be known and that science means knowledge, how does one distinguish science from pseudoscience if knowing the truth is bullshit?

How can we know that astrology, augury, heliocentrism and darwinism are pseudosciences, unless we know that the stars or angels who guide their voyage are no rulers of our fate, nor are the demons, to whom the Roman and Etruscan priests sacrificed the animals cut open for augury, nor does a neat calculation or ingenious explanation dispense us from believing our senses, nor indeed can 28-chromosomed animals evolve into 56-chromosomed (though it could have occurred in plants)?

And, since energy is Greek and potency is Latin for what can be but is not yet, how can potential energy be a special form of energy, and how can what can be but is not yet have at all a determined quantity?

If you consider what IS in a stone lifted from ground, the further from ground, the less gravity, as that force decreases with square of distance acc to Newton, while wight remains same.

If you consider what can be but is not, the more you lift it, the greater potential energy do you say it has.

So, energy is not something that is, but only what can be.

valencequark wrote:

no, energy is. period. in fact, thanks to hamilton and others, energy is central in much of physics. you seem to forget that there are many kinds of energy, not jsut gravitational potential energy. there's kinetic energy (the stuff of motion), other types of potential enrgy (electrostatic, for instance) and even mass has energy (the famous e=mc^2 a la special relativity). but, what the hell is the point of this drivel besides illustrating your misunderstanding of what energy is?

-vq

H G Lundahl wrote:

God is. period.You attribute one of God's attributes to energy and forget, not just that its shiftyness excludes the truth of your statement, but that even one of its so-called shifts, potential energy, is potential, meaning possible rather than actual.Hans Georg Lundahl
My answers, so far interspersed with vq's answering post:

valencequark wrote:

how do you know that "god is"?

Apart from historical revelation, there are the five proofs of God's existence that are parodically repeated and answered by modern physics. How so? Well, you seem determined on two points:

a) that there is something that simply IS, neither created nor destroyed

b) that it is energy, kinetic, potential, chemic, electromagnetic and so on all through "its" shifting and manyfold shapes.Your first point simply agrees with the third proof of God's existence, your second point is as blasphemous as erroneous: blasphemous by giving the attributes of God to something else, erroneous by violating the ontological characteristics of absolute existence.

Hans Georg Lundahl

and you still misunderstand potential energy. i agree that the terminology can be confusing, but make no doubt--potential energy exists. it is not the potential to "have energy", it is the potential to have kinetic energy. kinetic energy is no more real than potential energy, it is just more intuitive.-vq

The potential to have kinetic energy is clearly a potential to have potential to physic work.The potential to have kinetic energy is clearly a potential, a can-be, not an act, not an is.

No, if you say that energy IS, it is you who are misunderstanding potential energy, not I. Are you a physicist? If so, you are welcome to the debate. If not - well, the first message was a challenge directly to Rita, who is one and claims to know science.

But rather than defend her claim against my challenge, she choses to call me a raving lunatic and have me on IA. [=Ignore Author, she told AbbyLeever so on other message on same thread]

Hans Georg Lundahl

My answers after each one of his paragraphs.
valencequark wrote:

there are NO proofs of god's existence. unless you know of some empirical test and are holding out on the rest of the world.

There are five ways of proving God's existence, of which the first three are:

1 things are moved, whatever is moved is moved (kept in movement or change) by something, which is actually (not just potentially) moving it (keeping it in movement or change), and if that something is moved (kept in movement or change) by something else and that in turn by something else, one must sooner or later come to something which moves everything else and is moved by nothing, which everyone (except modern physicists) calls God.

2 things are caused, kept in movement or rest, change or invariance, and whatever is thus kept in movement or rest or any kind of causation, must have some cause, ultimately one which isn't caused, which everyone (except modern physicists) calls God.

3 things exist contingently (without their existence being in and of itself necessary), but whatever exists contingently must be kept in existence by something else, which must have actual existence, ultimately by something, the actual existence of which is in and of itself necessary, which can therefore neither be created nor destroyed, which everyone (except modern physicists) calls God.

secondly: the existence of energy in no way has anything to say about the existence of a deity.

If you are thinking of deities like Thor and Odin or Lugh Lamh Fáda or Ra - you are perfectly right. But we are kind of talking about the God whose name is He Who Is, The Being. In other words: existence itself. And you are giving the attribute of neither being created nor destroyed to something else, absurdly enough to something which is admittedly POTENTIAL. But the fact that you give that attribute to anything at all means clearly that (unlike Kant)you admit that there must be something which can neither be created nor destroyed: and so far you are in agreement with the third proof of God's existence.

i would like to see which of your "proofs" agrees with modern physics, seeing as how physics has NOTHING at all to say about religion. please understand that i know a lot about modern physics, and i have not seen any reference to deities. perhaps you would let me in on your little secret.

-vq

See above.

Hans Georg Lundahl

Voice of Principle budges in on me, so does MicoMan and valence quark, AbbyLeever makes points about history of physics

VoiceOfPrinciple wrote:

<7> Abby: You've done a good job of trying to persuade Hans of the value of modern science, but I'm afraid your effort will not be crowned with success. Hans does not accept the scientific method as you and I understand it. Hans' world view begins with two fundamental and unquestioned postulates:

1) God exists; and

2) All things must trace back to God.

If any line of inquiry leads to either of these first principles, or any of their corollaries, being called into question, Hans will reject it, as occurred in my discussion with him concerning the rotation of the earth.

I have disproven this contention about my arguments previously, but Voice Of Principle dishonestly repeats an insulting and disproven charge. Although he has previously admitted to having misunderstood my argument. Rather, it is you who reject any line of inquiry which proves the existence of God or anything seen to be obvious corollaries of it. And then here and previously shift the responsibility of doing that on me.

HGL

Debating Hans, however, is not a waste of time. The effort involved forces you to improve your own arguments and to increase your knowledge base, and those are good things in and of themselves. <7>

If improving your arguments is what you want to do, why don't you get started? Like answering my vindication of Classical Mathematics and its ability to understand logarithms, without changing the definition of number.

HGL

MicoMan2U wrote:

Good points. We can also be assured that if Hans really had a valid argument then it would have hit the front page of the paper. Currently there is no evidence to support deity and if there were it would certainly be the biggest news story ever.

Not in the Jewish/Masonic dominated press you read. In the history of learning it is old news. Only the textbooks claim that the proofs were later refuted - which is not the case. Because the refutations are sophistical rather than logic.

HGL

But I agree with VP that each new confrontation only serves to strengthen our ability to enlighten others to the reality of a secular existence, free from the chains of religious suppression.

Religious suppression! My foot! As for strengthening your ability, are you dreaming?

AbbyLeever wrote:

sorry about the html overrun.. fixed

AbbyLeever wrote:

VOP - I agree, it also serves to show other creationists that their position is not a homogeneous one - there is disagreement in the ranks. I accept Hans for what he is, and enjoy those discussions where I am not put through the brick wall.

Mico - also good points on the development argument.

Quark - it is easy to lose your temper with Hans - he is a "pre-enlightenment scholastic" and lives surrounded by (imho) brick walls that to him are reasonable limits on rational versus fantasy thoughts. The bit on numbers is 'enlightening', and the thoughts shared on the inquisition, to me, are disturbing but understandable. Read down through this [Classic Math] thread if you didn't read it before.

Thank you for beginning the thread with that nasty insult which is a total sideline to the issue like you keep cluttering up my threads with: like Inquisition and Galileo or modern medicine and surgery on a thread having to do with mathematics!

Doing a search on "pre-enlightenment scholastic" may help you understand. (a couple below, and I am sure Hans would provide more if asked): 1^st link 2^d link

Hans - my position is that there are things that we do not know, that what the reality is behind those things is outside our current ability to imagine, but that our inability to imagine it doesn't prevent it from being true or understandable at a future date.

The proper name for preferring that hogwash to the rational explanation that already does exist is obscurantism.HGL

Before the earth was found to be round it was logical to think it flat and unimaginable for some to even consider it being round - this did not prevent the roundness from occurring.

When was "before the earth was found to be round"? Certainly NOT in the Middle Ages, as they are called. The Church Fathers, Dante, St Thomas Aquinas and the rest of Medieval authority knew the earth was round. Bringing in the subject of Galileo being tried on account of believing it to move or Bruno being burnt for believing in pantheism has nothing whatever to do with the subject. And as for pre-classic antiquity, we have not read any logic defense of Babylonian flat earth cosmology - except by a Nestorian who misunderstood the Holy Scriptures, as heretics do.

Having a 'freethinkers' mind open enough to consider options on the universe allows me to consider the fascinating developments in evolution, archaeology, sub-atomic particles and universe inflation with the anticipation of finding new understandings of life, the universe and everything.

Being promiscuous and infertile in sex gives you a freedom of sweet imaginations - so does roaming and inconclusive thoughts in philosophic matters. I do not admire freethinkers more than wankers or profligates who use the condom. Sexual organs were made for procreation and imagination and reason for reaching conclusions.

HGL

valencequark wrote:

so now you are a conspiracy theorist too? why don't you pu tall of the energy that you waste whining about logarithms and international sceintific conspiracies into learning something worth learning?

-vq

If you call my observations on who dominates the so called free press conspiracy theories, you seem to be either part or victim of their conspiracy. Victim let's hope.

HGL

AbbyLeever wrote:

I will be happy to let anyone read the whole of that [Classical Math] thread, which was my point in referencing it. Here is the start:

http://boards.netscape.com/netscape/art_threaded.mbl?boardId=472202&artNum=94442&sort=pref&tsort=msgs&

a word of caution though - posts only last 1 month so review it soon.

If you change your Preferences, you can read older posts.

Quite a diatribe Hans. Let the facts fall where they may.Like that the flat earth belief was the dominant belief at one time - did I say medieval? no.

Neither did you present any other period when it was supposed to be dominant. Furthermore knowing that my Theology and Scholasticism are what you would call medieval, and you accusing me of being a flat earther, it would seem to be the most natural meaning of your words.

did you refute that it was at one time so? no.

Neither did you prove it or prove it had any point in relation to me and my creed.

Is this belief now proved wrong? yes, by both your and my acknowledgments.

Wrong? Yes. Once dominant or universal? ?

Does that validate my statement about it? Yes. Thank you.

The other point too, please. Do have the courtesy to go into details.

HGL

physics debate getting to real interesting clarifications and side issues

From a side issue - on dating vs. Bible - the conversation between valencequark and neocatholic VLinvicus took this relevant turn, which I intersperse with my answers:

valencequark wrote:

vl meant that you believe that the sun revolves around the earth.

-vq

Oh - I was afraid that might very well be the case.

Hans Georg Lundahl

VLinvictus wrote:

Tell me:

Are the moon, sun, and plaents suspended in crystaline spheres concentrically arranged around the central point of earth until the sphere of the fixed stars and the primum mobile be reached?

Seems quite likely, as far as I know. If the Church Fathers exposing the Psalms or Work of Six Days or something unanimously say so, then so it is - if not it might be not the case. And before you ask me whether space travel should be explained by holes in the crystalline spheres or by not having occurred, I say: I do not know. I never claimed to know everything, you know.

Certainly space travel has NOT exploded the sphere of the fix stars. Rather it was supposing a certain annual very minute movement to have parallax as cause for its appearance and not occurring in most stars that gave heliocentric astronomers the impression that the fix stars had many different distances from earth.



HGL

Is Satan encased in ice at the core of the earth?

More probably in the fire that is not quenched. Location otherwise correct. Dante took some poetic liberties: Divina Commedia is science fiction of Theology (Eschatology of each soul) rather than Theology (Eschatology of each soul) pure and simple.

Hans Georg Lundahl

valencequark wrote:

i believe that he encounters several problems with his earth centered model of the solar system.

the gravitational attraction between masses is very well known and can be measured. we know that the sun is many orders of magnitude more massive than earth. how does he propose that the earth holds the sun in a stable orbit, given this little problem of the mass difference?

I do not believe that the earth holds the sun in orbit, nor do I believe the sun could hold the earth in orbit as Newton imagined and I learned in school. His (?)parallell of something being rotated on a string equates the supposedly equal centrifugal and centripetal forces of momentum and gravitation in supposed solar system with the obviously greater and static strength of the string keeping the stone (or whatever) in orbit.

the motion of other planets is documented to reverse itself now and then for smll increments of time (retrograde motion). to most people, this is due to the relative motion of earth and other planets as they both revolve about the sun. how does one account for the retrograde motion of the other planetsin an earth centered frame?

To Aristotle who knew this very well, this is due to them being directed directly by angels - or "gods" as the pagans would have called them. Argument mentioned by St Thomas. Though Aristotle was wrong in limiting angels to those directing the stars: he thought that everything below the moon orbit was directed by necessary influence from the stars.

how does one account for the redshift of distant objects as they recede from the milky way in an earth centered frame?

One possibility would be that the red shift is not due to any Doppler effect, but rather to greater redness in light source.

does he believe in ufos? if so where do they come from/

-vq

I believe the empiric facts attested by people claiming to have seen ufos. I do not believe them to come from outer space, more probably from Hell - in order to terrorise and entice people into accepting some sort of New Age or New World Order. Or in order to make physicians and authorities overestimate the occurrence of hallucinations.


HGL

valencequark wrote:

so you believe in a static universe? then you have major problems. it is the angular momentum of the earth about the sun which keeps it from crashing into the sun. in a static solar system there is nothing to keep the earth from being dragged into the sun, unless of course you don't beleive in gravity.

Did you miss that I do not believe in the SOLAR system at all?

then you encounter other problems, such as: how do you explain the result of cavendish's experiment?

Which is what?

what about baron von eotvos?

Which is what?

as for your second point: you find it more plausible that angels keep planets where they are rather than angular momentum? yeah, right.

Angular momentum would require planetary orbits of other shape than actual obserbations.

your last point about redshift doesn't wash. redder balckbody radiation is associated with cooler sources, which is possible to occur. however, cooler sources not only produce redder light but they produce less of it, so you would have detection problems. no, the redshift is due to the motion of far off objects, not to reduced temperature.


-vq

You are assuming that you already know all about the different causes of redshift. That you can rule them out one by one.

Considering your fantastic explanation of where the momentum goes when a body is standing still - turning into "potential energy" - you might be less picky about explanations being too fantastic or out of the way.

HGL

valencequark wrote:

what is your definition of the solar system, hans? by solar system i meant the arrangement of the earth, other planets and the sun. to me, saying that you do not believe in the solar system is like saying that you don't believe that the sun exists. is this what you beleive?

Not believing the earth to be a planet or the sun to be its centre, I do not believe that SOLAR system is a proper name for it. Nor do I belive that its outer limit is very far from the sphere of the fix stars - so I believe its limitation from "other solar systems" and the belief such exist to be bosh. So, you were asking me a question about the Universe, to call it by its proper name and skip the artificial limitation?

HGL

as for the experiments that i mentioned, they were two experiments to measure gravitational attraction. cavendish measured the gravitational attraction bewteen two lead spheres and eotvos measured gravitational mass and inertial mass to see if they are equivalent (somehitng einstein incorporated into general relativity).

All right (for now, though I might have some reservations) - and who has actually and directly measured the mass of the sun? Obviously the supposed mass of the sun is a conclusion of its supposed position in the centre of a system that is supposedly solar. Or do you have better evidence?

HGL

what do you mean by angular momentum would require different orbital shapes?

Different from the ones actually observed with their retrograde motion: more like the ones theoretically constructed but never actually proven by Kepler at al.

again, jsut because you do not understand the concepts of momentum and energy does not mean that nobody else does either.

Just because you do not understand the concepts of substance and relation, of act and potency does not mean nobody does so either. [That was ad hominem, but vq didn't offer any argument in this paragraph to be more rationally argued]

HGL

PS, from vq's previous argument:
vq wrote:

redder balckbody radiation is associated with cooler sources, which is possible to occur. however, cooler sources not only produce redder light but they produce less of it, so you would have detection problems.

Also if the distance to the sphere of fix stars is very small? I mean, a small amount of light may well be detected at closer hand which would be undetectable at the great distances that do not prove since they are supposed to be proven from the parallactic nature of certain annual motions in certain fix stars not to be detected by naked eye, nor even by Galileo's telescope.

HGL
…
If you are tempted to skirt the last issue raised on my message, here is the link to my last post on the other subthread, where it belongs: here

valencequark wrote:

i have not attempted to skirt anything, dear fool. i have, however wasted enough of my time on the likes of you. you refuse to believe experimental verification of the laws of physics, but you believe in the absolute truth of some mythical tale from a group of people who had virtually no understanding of their surroundings.

good day to you, sir!


-vq

As courteous in what he is saying as on a certain previous occasion - though somewhat more courteous in wording. Were you upset at seeing my little mistake in the html? I've corrected it.

A group of people with virtually no understanding of their surroundings you say: do you mean with no heliocentrism and Newtonism or what? I call that an advantage. Refuse to believe experimental verification of physical law? As when I refuse to call a bad verification a good one (Corioli effect for instance) or as when I refuse to agree to your question begging applications of physical laws supposed to be proven by experiments?

Well, at least the Apostles and their contemporaries knew:
a) only God can raise the dead, no natural cause can do so
b) only God or angels or the devil can cause lots of people to see the same thing that physically is not present
c) the devil has no power to heal miraculously, which God has
d) God doesn't support the testimony of madmen or liars by miracles and he puts narrow limits on the devil's power to do so
e) if people lie they do so to achieve an advantage and so they won't cling to a lie they made up or its moral correlates if it means death penalty
f) someone who has been fooled by a false original witness doesn't pretend to be the original witness, himself because he is by hypothesis honest
g) a physician can tell when someone who has fallen out of a window and broken his neck is stone dead - a man who has been buried in heavy swathings with lots of aromatic herbs and no air for three days (like Christ, minus the herbs) or four (like Lazarus) must be dead, at least from suffocation, even if he wasn't so to start with

and somehow or other some of you manage to deny either one or the other of these basics and deny the correlate following from them and historic record: that Christ is indeed risen, that he is indeed God, as he said. You are not the one to talk loud about believing myths and refusing experimental verification.

HGL
...
Is vq sulking because my point wasn't cluttered and because I hadn't misunderstood the terminology of modern physics? I wrote the post below the day before yesterday, and vq has previously lost his temper at least twice in this debate:


valencequark wrote:

your first point is totally cluttered. are you measuring kinetic or potential energy?

I was asking the question whether potential energy had ever been actually directly measured.

HGL
...et c as above

VLinvictus wrote:

Perhaps, like me, he found it impossible to communicate with you, since you appear to live in a completely different universe from either him or me. That can be quite frustrating.

I am constantly referring - also on this thread - to things that can be verified in the Universe we all - including himself and you - live in. Like no instrument directly measuring potential energy which furthermore cannot be identified with either force (because, unlike "potential energy" it does not increase with height above ground) nor momentum (because a non-moving object has none) nor with any other unitary entity or quality and the quantity of which is a postulate for theory of conservation of energy.

HGL

Don't you get frustrated when people refuse to believe that the earth is truly the center of the universe, that the sun revolves around it? When they refuse to believe that time is not a dimension? That John Paul II is not the Pope?

I know some things I am in for. People refusing to believe me is no great inconvenience, since I am not asking them just to take my word for it. I would be stupid if I did. People who shirk argument are more of a bother.

HGL

Actually, I would wager that you don't get upset at all. You can rely on your own superiority in possessing "the truth."

Well, I can do the same.

You have not commented on it, but many who reject Vatican II reject the decree of religious freedom. I support that decree wholeheartedly, and you are free to believe whatever you wish so long as you do not attempt to use the coercive power of the state to make me believe it. Since you are a Swede or a Norwegian or a Dane--I have not figured out which--I feel no political threat from you.

I am of course against the Dignitatis Humanae document in the meaning it obviously seems to have and is supported as having by JPII. The meaning which says it was a crime to burn Giordano Bruno or Valdensians and Albigensians. Nonetheless, you may be correct in feeling no political threat from me. You see, whatever right a Catholic state has to combat error, that gives Protestant and Secularised states (you could describe Scandinavia as both of them de facto, besides being de jure but since four centuries no longer de facto Catholic countries) no right whatsoever to combat each and every dissent including such as is based on truth. If you want to describe me as Swede, Dane or Norwegian, none is totally inaccurate as far as ancestry is concerned, but my citizenship is Swedish.

HGL

So, guess what, Hans? You win! Yes! The earth is the center of the universe! The sun revolves around it! Gravity is a lie! Copernicus and Gallileo roast in hell!

Copernicus gave us a hypothesis superficially useful for computing motions of planets by using a model simpler than reality. Galileo gave intellectual assent to the hypothesis as a reality, but withdrew that support. As far as I know both died as good Catholics - Galileo as a penitent. And why do you concede even more than I have asked you to concede?

Because I am no political threat to you? For no intellectual reason? And what about the thing this thread is about? Have you encountered the idea that threads are supposed to be about some subject and not just to be cluttered up with any subject that happens to come to your mind?

No, this was not so much an apology for vq's silence on the points I have raised as an ironically worded rebuke for raising these points or any at all in any rational manner.

HGL

"No serious takers for five days... "

I wrote, starting from older messages (time to review them in right reading order:

1 valencequark wrote:

physicists don't postulate a prime mover, you fuckwit.

You change the terminology, but you still think there is an ultimate cause for anything being kept in movement being kept in movement: you call it energy and claim it is impersonal and immanent, other Philosophers call it God and the best of them reject your view precisely because the prime mover must be actual, not potential, therefore not immanent, furthermore identic with prime cause (2nd way) prime necessary existence (3d way, which you used to identify with matter and nowadays identify with energy), the intelligence behind the order of the universe (4th way), the ultimate perfection (5th way) and for these last reasons not impersonal. If I point this out to you, you cling to distinctions that are more terminological than real and insult me.

HGL

have tolerated your ludicrous ideas for far too long. ... you have no grasp of what i refer to as energy.

Why were my physics grades so good then?

your argument that i am placing god like qulities on energy rests on the existence of god, which you have spectacularly failed to do.

I have not so failed, it was not so much an argument as an accusation, the starting point for the argument above.

HGL

nobody has any emprical proof of god, or everyone would be religious.

Everyone was religious, until it was seen too clearly that it involves being a Catholic and was rejected for selfish real reasons with the aid of a rhetoric trying to hide it with, amongst other things, bad philosophy and science.

and as far as you referring to me as an idiot, well i guess it takes one to know one, you smug arrogant flat earthed fool.

• A) I am not flat earthed.


• B) You seem to refer to: "But some idiots who call themselves physicists really want very badly to place the principle of movement and change, of cause, permanence and existence, within the limits of the physical, the manyfold, the continuous (though they tend to deny the reality of continuum by atomism), the moved, the changing, the caused, the things that would obviously for any sane man be seen as also kept in existence and whatever permanence it has by something else. Something outside it. Therefore they pretend that something they call energy is this first mover, cause, necessary existence. But that contention is disproven by the potentiality of energy, especially apparent in potential energy - while the first mover, cause and necessary existance must be actual to move, cause, (put and) keep in existence anything else." I was not saying something about your own precious little person apart from the other ones. If you are so sensitive about the category you place yourself in being referred to as a bunch of idiots, you might do well not so to refer to your betters, like fundies or dogmatic Catholics.

if ignorance is bliss, you must be the happiest mother f@cker this side of equator.



-vq

Ignorance isn't bliss - so you are not and I am not.

HGL

2 valencequark wrote:

ok, firstoff: i apologize for losing my temper, it was uncalled for.

now, you cannot accuse me of changing terminology on you when it is you who is misusing words.

I am not misusing words, nor am I accusing thee personally but rather you-all modern physicists collectively of changing terminology.

energy is nothing more than a measureable quantity posessed by physical systems that happens to be conserved.

How do you measure potential energy? If you suspend a stone from a Newton-metre ten miles above ground (in a balloon) and from a Newton-metre standing on the ground, does the Newton-metre show MORE energy in the first case? No. Saying it is conserved means that measurings of later kinetic energy are accepted as measurings of former "potential energy".

and the reason that it is conserved is because the laws of physics are symmetrical with respect to time. so what? linear momentum and angular momentum are conserved for similar reasons. there is nothing "god like" about conservation laws.

In "potential energy" there is as yet no movement, hence no momentum.

if your phsyics grades were so good, why is it that you misunderstand something galileo postulated over 400 years ago. an object that is moving with constant velocity will continue to do so indefinately unless acted upon by an exteral force.

That is a postulate - not an observed fact. Aristotle observing that sublunar objects flying through the air and eventually losing momentum and falling to the ground said the opposite.

i don't see anything required to keep objects in motion.

Even on your supposition the conservation of momentum is required.

you still misunderstand what potential energy is, and i have explained it to you once before. potential energy is real energy, systems posses it.

In school I was taught OBJECTS possess kinetic energy when moving, potential energy when in a postion where a force could make them move once the obstacle is removed. Now, I was asking in what way the STONE that is ten miles above ground possesses any entity that is greater than the corresponding entity in a stone three feet above ground. SYSTEMS - well, that is another matter: there we are not touching substantial ENTITY, but rather RELATION.

it comes in several varieties. it is called potential energy because it has the potential to be kinetic energy. . it is not called potential energy because it is not energy, that is a misconception.

It is called potential because it is just potentially and not yet really kinetic energy which in turn is called energy because it is not really but just potentially physical work.

you make the unwarranted assupmtion that there is some intelligence behind the order in the universe. that is not a necessary condition of an ordered universe. it may be a sufficient condition, but it is NOT necessary.

Wake up. Welcome to reality. There is such a thing as common sense, you know.

the expansion of the universe totally negates the need for an intelligence to order things.

The what? Are you referring to some farfetched conclusion from the redshift?

why? becase the entropy of a system relates to the number of microstates that a system can be in. as you increase the size of the universe you increase the number of possible microstates that it can have. when you do this, you increase the maximum value of disorder that the universe can have by a whole bunch, when the actual disorder of the universe hasn't increased.

If the Universe were blindly expanding, the actual disorder would increase. Stability is a known prerequisite for order.

it si therefore possible to order some regions, disorder other regions by a greater amount as required by thermodynamics, and still eb under the maximum value of entropy that the universe can have. no intelligence required, only the laws of physics.

Correct me if I am wrong, but these laws of thermodynamics have been determined not only or purely by sublunar observations, but rather by taking into account the supposed heliocentrism of the supposed solar system.

Furthermore not increasing disorder is something other than ordering what had no order to start with.

Furthermore you are giving me a naked statement rather than technical proof - a statement which to any man possessed of common sense seems to accuse you of exactly what I did accuse you of: giving matter and energy the attributes of God as discovered by metaphysics: in this case intelligence designing the well-ordered reality we see around us. That makes it the 4th way of proving the existence of God that modern physics parodies.

now, before you go to "well, where do the laws of physics come from" let me assure you that god will never be an answer. why? because that would be a supernatural explanation, which means you are no longer doing physics.

If you are:

• A) claiming to seek an answer
  
  and


• B) excluding the obvious answer because it belongs to a higher science
  
  you are also


• C) courting wrong answers, like postulating this or that divine attribute for the things that your science claims to study objectively.

further, as we make progresses with the quantum theory of fields we may come closer and closer to explaining the universe with a few numbers, rather than with a few physical values that have to be measured in a lab.

But is it the real universe as actually observed that you are explaining - or a construction that has no proven identity with it?

as for your physics grades: well, those are your business, not mine. but i'm willing to bet that mine are at least as good as yours.

-vq

I never denied yours were good. Only I would have got really bad ones if I had misunderstood the basic concepts, you know. So, your guess on why we differ seems to be quite wrong.

Hans Georg Lundahl

3 valencequark wrote:

your first point is totally cluttered. are you measuring kinetic or potential energy?

I was asking the question whether potential energy had ever been actually directly measured.

HGL

well...if you use a "newton meter", which i assume is something that reads a value in newtons, to measure an object obove earth, you are directly measuring the gravitational force on the object.

Go on.

this is related to the potential energy, which can be calculated given the force reading.

Related to means like not identical with, correct me if I am wrong. So measuring the force is not measuring the potential energy.

HGL

there should be no mention of kinetic energy becuase the object is assumed stationary, so it has zero kinetic energy.

Exactly, so whenever one measures kinetic energy later, there is no potential energy left to be measured, by hypothesis. Measuring the later kinetic energy is therefore not measuring the potential energy it had.

HGL

and yes, your scale reads smaller forces as you increase your altitude, in fact the gravitational acceleration field generated by earth drops off as the inverse square of the distance from the center of the earth, and since f=ma (newton's second law) you can relate the force to the gravitational acceleration.

Which further underlines that "potential energy" is not directly measured by using the newton-metre, also that potential energy is not identical with the force acting on the object.

HGL

physicists define terms so that they may communicate, this is a part of life. if you want to talk physics, you had better use teh terminology in the sense of physics.

Even if your terminology can be seen as muddled when measured by the facts?

HGL

as far as potential energy and momentum, i was merely pointing out that conservation of energy is one of several conservation laws on physics, i was not trying to incorporate linear or angular momentum into a definition of potential energy.

I was not accusing you of that. I was merely ruling out the identification of "potential energy" with momentum. Kinetic energy can be so identified and seen to be a real and actual quality in the object itself as falling - but in what category of being would you place "potential energy"?

HGL

inertia is a postulate and an experimentally verified fact.

Like most physicists you assume inertia to mean quite as much continuing in a linear motion at constant speed as standing still until moved. When was it verified that objects in linear motion at constant speed continue until acted on? When was it verified that an arrow loses momentum by air resistance rather than by inertia in the old aristotelic sense, being loth to move?

HGL

aristotle was wrong in his analysis because he failed to take into account that air is composed of tiny molecules that cumulatively exert noticable forces on moving objects.

How do you prove air resistance is the cause an arrow loses momentum?

HGL

an object moving through air under no forces besides those due to air will lose momentum (and kinetic energy) and fall to the ground (losing potential energy).

How do you know the air resistance to be so great that it causes the arrow to lose momentum - rather than the arrow losing momentum by being material and therefore inert in the good old aristotelic sense?

HGL

potential energy is related to the concpet of work because to increase an object's potential energy one must do physical work on the object.

The concept of potential energy is also related [to physical work]as follows: "potential energy" is supposed to be converted into same quantity of kinetic energy which can be converted into "same quantity" physical work. Which is why I take it that one of the methods of measuring "potential energy" indirectly is measuring the work "its" ensuing kinetic energy=momentum actually does(=impact) and assuming the quantity is the same minus air friction.

Physical work is easy to identify, so is kinetic energy=momentum, but potential energy cannot be identified with force, since the force acting is supposed to be smaller in a situation where the potential energy is supposed to be greater.

HGL

me wake up? sorry, but you flailing your ignorance of physics and crying about terminology does not make you any more in tune with reality than i.

-vq

Valence Quark is certainly awake enough to be dishonest in argument by giving non causa pro causa: I told him to wake up when claiming there is no need for a designer of the Universe.

HGL