Richard Feynman, a well respected, now deceased physicist, described energy as a calculated number that did not change after nature had done her tricks. He said, energy didn’t provide a reason for the various formulae used and that physics had no knowledge of the reality of energy.Many physicists are annoyed by his remarks and say energy is well understood; but they don’t tell us what it is, only that their calculations work.
Energy in gravity situations.
More recently I see Brian Cox, in his Wonders of Life TV series, saying that the meaning of energy is woolly and its nature difficult to pin down. He describes how he would do work and expend energy taking water in a glass to a waterfall top. He multiplies the water mass m by the height of the fall h and then by the gravity acceleration g to find the energy and work he would do. Then the “woolly” bit; he says the water would possess this energy as height related gravitational potential energy (GPE),
It’s not clear how GPE came about. Earth was and still is regarded as the attractive source; speed was seen as energy related and falls from higher levels delivered greater speeds. So was it concluded that height had a potential to deliver energy; did that lead to the concept of a GPE energy store becoming a store of motion based kinetic energy? It’s a concept we use to introduce energy conservation and its maths of mgh = 1/2mv2.
Yet in reality there are no stores of potential or motion based energy and the gravity force of attraction does not come from the earth.
Any object falling h, toward earth achieves a velocity given by v2 = 2gh (as per equation of motion v2 = u2 + 2as). That is why we can equate 1/2mv2 to mgh. We can do this even when gravity falls are curved, as in pendulum swings, because, the changing v is related to a x ds, which as illustrated in the diagram, is equal to g x dh
The gravity acceleration delivers a velocity increase as fall distance increases. That is a reality; our motion energy store is not real, just a calculation. If, for example, we fell with an object, it would have no velocity relative to us and so, no motion energy store. We say energy is indestructible, yet its conserved total is observer dependent. I say the story of how in a gravity fall the loss of energy from one store as h reduces and its gain in another store as v increases is pure fiction. Why the gravity acceleration happens is key to understanding the involvement of energy in gravity actions.
GPE and kinetic forms of energy were in place long before we knew of the atomic world, long before Einstein had linked energy to mass in his famous E = mc2 and long before Planck had linked radiated energy to frequency in his E = hf. So it’s not unreasonable to ask if these earlier forms of energy make sense in a universe where all energies appear to be either in matter or in radiations.
Force is desire.
Newton’s laws of 1687 had led to the thinking that attracting forces from the earth gave objects above it weight. Just over 200 years later, Einstein was pointing out that we feel no Newton style impressed force in a gravity fall. His general relativity theory had space time as curved by matter and space time causing matter to move. Mathematically its predictions were a success, but it did not explain gravity. Indeed, Einstein still thought something “remarkably imparted the same acceleration to all bodies”. The quantum mechanics that followed, did not even address gravity.
We calculate the weight of an object held above earth using mg and like Brian Cox, see this g as gravity’s acceleration. But what has a might happen acceleration got to do with the weight of a held object?
Newton’s laws of motion had described impressed forces and linked them to mass and acceleration using F = ma (mg in gravity’s case). So g, has the same value and units as F/m, a force per unit mass. . However, Newton’s relationship does not mean they are the same. Indeed, when we calculate weight using mg, we are actually multiplying m by F/m. Weight is actually the product of an object’s mass and a force that is per unit of object mass.
But how can such a force come from the earth? The answer is, it doesn’t. It is a force, or better still a desire that arises in the particles of the above earth object. Such particles desire earth radiated energies; they are the something that Einstein said “remarkably imparted the same acceleration to all bodies”. We would be better seeing weight as md where d is desire per unit mass and equal to but not the same as g.
Energy is alive
Newton’s externally impressed force had not been without its critics. In the 1700’s Emilie du Chatelet, a noblewoman, philosopher and translator of Newton’s works had not been impressed by the idea of impressed forces. She saw bodies, not as of inactive matter, but as causal agents, and force as a body property. She knew nothing of particulate matter but to her bodies were alive and proactive.
If we had accepted her view of forces and not that of Newton, we would now see charged particles and particle structures as deciding how to respond to radiated energies coming their way. There would be no external forces, no force fields, no force carriers and no actions at a distance. Einstein’s space time would not be determining the paths of space structures and radiations. Particle desires for space energies would be the cause of structural motions; particle desires would be the cause of curved radiated energy flows.
Particles of energy don’t just desire radiated energies, they control them and in so doing influence the actions of other particles. Energy control is why electrons are held at a distance from the protons they energy supply in atoms and why in our solar system the particle systems of planets stay in orbit around our sun.
We feel no force in a free fall because our particle structures, led by electrons are absorbing, processing and emitting earth radiations in a way freely decided by them. Each and every near steady velocity state reached is for them a near stable energy processing state like that at rest. Each such state enables their energy desire to further accelerate them. Our increased speed v relative to the radiations has little effect; our particles continue to process energy at light speed relative to them by simply doing a miniscule blue shift of the energy being absorbed. There is no accumulation of motion based energy.
When close to the earth interacting radiations start distorting our structure and we feel our particles resisting the unwanted energies. Some 1/2mv2 of energy is required to negate our velocity. But note how this energy is motion changing, not motion stored. Even more energy is required to reverse our motion and locate us in a stable energy location relative the earth and hopefully, with a structure much as as it was before our fall.
Abandon the ideas of gravitational potential energy and motion based energy stores. They have no reality. Energy as a living content in both matter and radiation is a reality that explains gravity and all motions in the macro and micro worlds.
Living energy is not confined to gravity.
The concept of energy as alive and proactive within particulate matter provides many answers. In quantum mechanics, for example, many are puzzled as to why we can only get acceptable probabilities for an action by taking into account all possibilities, including those we know won’t happen. The reason is that in deciding how to act, particles consider all of the possibilities their surround energies offer. To be successful the maths has to do likewise.
A neutron is far from neutral. It proactively acts when an unstable structure needs more energy by becoming an electron and proton. Electrons and protons have different roles but proactively cooperate. The more mobile electrons are very much the getters of radiated energy and they and protons link up and cooperate so as to control the energy desires of all of of a structure’s particles. Light speed is fixed because it is the rate at which particles choose to process radiated energy.
We humans are cellular structures. Each cell is the particles of many trillions of atoms. Cooperating cells give their structures capabilities non cellular structures don’t have. We can, for example, by contracting muscles extend our structure as in this rugby tackle, and thereby causing an opposing reaction.
Particles evolved us and other cellular forms to better serve their desires. But how well are we doing that? Modern day stress, mental health and gender issues are all signs that we aren’t doing that to their satisfaction. We prioritise wealth and possessions they don’t desire. We should listen to them more because they don’t need us, live on when we die, and were managing without our species just a mere 200,000 years ago.
We may struggle to see inactive structures as living and proactive but look at them and note how the energies they are sending our way are related to what the sun is sending their way. Touch them and feel how their particles resist the approach of ours and how they convey different textures to us. The particles in such earthly structures occupy less than 0.0001% of their space volume and in their energy stable state have minimum radiated energies acting between them. But try pulling them apart and the desire of electrons to serve protons increases and becomes very strong. Energy is very much alive in these supposedly dead structures.
Structures only change if it suits them. We can cause changes but only by providing the energy conditions under which a structure’s particles will decide to change. Particles in a stable, energy efficient structure make every effort to resist change. A cricket ball does not leave a cricket bat because of some contact force. Its particles flee from the unwanted energies coming their way. For the same reason protons seek to stay ahead of the light speed energies chasing them in colliders. If they could maintain light speed they would have no unwanted energies distorting them and adding to their mass.
Chemical, nuclear, states of matter, expansion changes, thermal flows, electrical flows, electromagnetic interactions and actions in solid state devices are all the result of particle energy desires. They all involve changes to matter particles and their interacting radiations. Generally if particles can more stably and more efficiently interact with environmental energy by changing to a different arrangement or structural form they will seek the opportunity to do so.
The quantum world is not one of laws that decide what energy is allowed and what is not allowed. Electrons, for example, locate where they choose to, ever seeking a best location from which to deliver the energy desires of nucleons, getting it efficiently from their environment without impinging on the work of other electrons. The quantum world is a living one; not one of calculations.
A living energy model
Discovery of the atomic world should have improved and supported our understanding of the macro world, but it didn’t. Quantum and classical worlds drifted apart as physicists concentrated on finding mathematics that supported outcomes. They ignored why questions, leaving them to philosophers or suggesting maths was representative of reality. But as I have shown here the maths can lead to misconceptions.
Energy is not a calculable number. It is the root content of everything, that which has desires and that which is desired. Every action and change we see is a result of energy desires intent on making some adjustment. The why of those desires I suggest can never be known to us, but we can improve our lives by working with them and improve our world in the process
Energy in physics is currently a number and forces externally impressed. A living energy model sees living energy as the content of everything and its desires as responsible for all changes and actions.