Understanding the Composition of Energy

[quantumcarl]

Can anyone please tell me what energy is made of? If this is a really bad question please feel free to eliminate this thread... sorry to bother!

 

[xXPhoenixFireXx]

Not a bad question at all.

I don't think anyone really knows. Someone I knew said energy might be the manefesation of a certain configuration of space-time and the limited set of rules it can go to change. But then what is space made of?

Eventually it's going to boil down to something fundamental that isn't made up of anything else but itself.

So in short energy is made up of energy. You've got to stop somewhere.

 

[eep]

Why do some teachers always tell me that energy is simply a mathematical quantity that we use to help calculate things? It seems to me that energy is much more fundamental than that. Perhaps energy is the purest component you can ever get. That is, energy is not made up of anything else.

 

[quantumcarl]

Why do some teachers always tell me that energy is simply a mathematical quantity that we use to help calculate things? It seems to me that energy is much more fundamental than that. Perhaps energy is the purest component you can ever get. That is, energy is not made up of anything else.

So energy could be considered as an element but energy may or may not be a compound.

gold as an element is practically considered made of itself but it is a compound

Fluorides

Formula Data
AuF3
name: gold (III) fluoride
formula weight: 253.962
formal oxidation number of Au: 3
AuF5
name: gold (V) fluoride
formula weight: 291.959
formal oxidation number of Au: 5
Chlorides

Formula Data
AuCl
name: gold (I) chloride
formula weight: 232.419
formal oxidation number of Au: 1
AuCl3
name: gold (III) chloride
formula weight: 303.325
formal oxidation number of Au: 3
Bromides

Formula Data
AuBr
name: gold (I) bromide
formula weight: 276.871
formal oxidation number of Au: 1
AuBr3
name: gold (III) bromide
formula weight: 436.679
formal oxidation number of Au: 3
Iodides

Formula Data
AuI
name: gold (I) iodide
formula weight: 323.871
formal oxidation number of Au: 1
AuI3
name: gold (III) iodide
formula weight: 577.68
formal oxidation number of Au: 3
Oxides

Formula Data
Au2O3
name: gold (III) oxide
formula weight: 441.931
formal oxidation number of Au: 3

no hydrides of gold

from:http://www.webelements.com/webelements/scholar/elements/gold/compounds.html

Is there a motivating force behind energy? It would probably be an even more elusive "object" of study judging from how energy has already proven to be a slippery subject of inquiry... with regard to origins.

 

[jtbell]

Energy is a property of a system, not a substance with an independent existence. You might as well ask "what is length made of?" or "what is momentum made of?"

 

[ZapperZ]

Energy is a property of a system, not a substance with an independent existence. You might as well ask "what is length made of?" or "what is momentum made of?"

This is THE best response for this type of question. It illustrates clearly one of the things that we have to deal with in physics - what is the appropriate question to ask of Nature. This is because meaningless question will give you meaningless answer that doesn't add to your understanding of what is being studied.

Zz.

 

[quantumcarl]

This is because meaningless question will give you meaningless answer that doesn't add to your understanding of what is being studied.

Zz.

My question only seems meaningless if the meaning of my question escapes you as it does me. The meaning of my inquiry escapes me and that is the motivation behind my inquiry.

Are there other examples of properties whose origin and composition are a mystery?

How else can I ask "what is energy made of and where does it come from? Is it taboo to ask this sort of question? Is it impossible to answer? Or is it as ridiculous as asking "what are the origins of nature?"

One thing I can assure anyone of is that I am not leading you toward a sermon on the nature of metaphysics or the futility of the study of physics. I am simply finding out if there have been any studies on the nature of the origin of energy.

PS. I have a feeling I've posted the wrong formula for the composition of gold. If so, please ignore the post!

 

[quantumcarl]

Here's a most intelligent way of re-phrasing Bohr's idea that what science says about nature has little to do with what nature is.

Please consider this quote:

Man is not born to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out where the problems begin, and then to take his stand within the limits of the intelligible

With acknowledgments to "Moving Finger".

So, I suppose my question stands outside of the limits of the intelligible. However, if one doesn't make a stand somewhere, one really doesn't learn anything.

 

[EL]

quantumcarl, I quote a text by Feynman which should give you a hint of why your question can be considered meaningless.

The quote is from part of the text at
http://www.feynman.com/
under Life&Science, What is science?

In order to talk to each other, we have to have words, and that's all right. It's a good idea to try to see the difference, and it's a good idea to know when we are teaching the tools of science, such as words, and when we are teaching science itself.

To make my point still clearer, I shall pick out a certain science book to criticize unfavorably, which is unfair, because I am sure that with little ingenuity, I can find equally unfavorable things to say about others. There is a first grade science book which, in the first lesson of the first grade, begins in an unfortunate manner to teach science, because it starts off an the wrong idea of what science is. There is a picture of a dog--a windable toy dog--and a hand comes to the winder, and then the dog is able to move. Under the last picture, it says "What makes it move?" Later on, there is a picture of a real dog and the question, "What makes it move?" Then there is a picture of a motorbike and the question, "What makes it move?" and so on.

I thought at first they were getting ready to tell what science was going to be about--physics, biology, chemistry--but that wasn't it. The answer was in the teacher's edition of the book: the answer I was trying to learn is that "energy makes it move."

Now, energy is a very subtle concept. It is very, very difficult to get right. What I meant is that it is not easy to understand energy well enough to use it right, so that you can deduce something correctly using the energy idea--it is beyond the first grade. It would be equally well to say that "God makes it move," or "spirit makes it move," or "movability makes it move." (In fact, one could equally well say "energy makes it stop.")

Look at it this way: that’s only the definition of energy; it should be reversed. We might say when something can move that it has energy in it, but not what makes it move is energy. This is a very subtle difference. It's the same with this inertia proposition.

Perhaps I can make the difference a little clearer this way: If you ask a child what makes the toy dog move, you should think about what an ordinary human being would answer. The answer is that you wound up the spring; it tries to unwind and pushes the gear around.

What a good way to begin a science course! Take apart the toy; see how it works. See the cleverness of the gears; see the ratchets. Learn something about the toy, the way the toy is put together, the ingenuity of people devising the ratchets and other things. That's good. The question is fine. The answer is a little unfortunate, because what they were trying to do is teach a definition of what is energy. But nothing whatever is learned.

Suppose a student would say, "I don't think energy makes it move." Where does the discussion go from there?

I finally figured out a way to test whether you have taught an idea or you have only taught a definition.

Test it this way: you say, "Without using the new word which you have just learned, try to rephrase what you have just learned in your own language." Without using the word "energy," tell me what you know now about the dog's motion." You cannot. So you learned nothing about science. That may be all right. You may not want to learn something about science right away. You have to learn definitions. But for the very first lesson, is that not possibly destructive?

I think for lesson number one, to learn a mystic formula for answering questions is very bad. The book has some others: "gravity makes it fall;" "the soles of your shoes wear out because of friction." Shoe leather wears out because it rubs against the sidewalk and the little notches and bumps on the sidewalk grab pieces and pull them off. To simply say it is because of friction, is sad, because it's not science.

 

[Perturbation]

Not a bad question at all.

I don't think anyone really knows. Someone I knew said energy might be the manefesation of a certain configuration of space-time and the limited set of rules it can go to change. But then what is space made of?

Eventually it's going to boil down to something fundamental that isn't made up of anything else but itself.

So in short energy is made up of energy. You've got to stop somewhere.

Hey, Phoenix. 'Tis Icantthinkofaname from totse. Good to see you here.

 

[ZapperZ]

My question only seems meaningless if the meaning of my question escapes you as it does me. The meaning of my inquiry escapes me and that is the motivation behind my inquiry.

Are there other examples of properties whose origin and composition are a mystery?

How else can I ask "what is energy made of and where does it come from? Is it taboo to ask this sort of question? Is it impossible to answer? Or is it as ridiculous as asking "what are the origins of nature?"

One thing I can assure anyone of is that I am not leading you toward a sermon on the nature of metaphysics or the futility of the study of physics. I am simply finding out if there have been any studies on the nature of the origin of energy.

PS. I have a feeling I've posted the wrong formula for the composition of gold. If so, please ignore the post!

You are confusing the reponse that the question is "meaningless" with a criticism. It isn't! To say it is meaningless literally means what it says - the question has no meaning.

So the response you got was an explanation on why it can't be answered, NOT a criticism that it shouldn't be asked. Do you see the difference?

I brought up another example a while back when people asked for the size of a photon - it is something a photon was never defined with. As with jtbell, I also brought up an analogous example of asking for the color of pain, for example, or something equally "meaningless". So asking something of which it was never defined with (see jtbell's example of what asking what is momentum made up of) can lead to non-meaningful answers. It isn't a criticism - it is an explanation.

Zz.

 

[ziadett]

i think energy is just mathiematical quantity

 

[masudr]

Are there other examples of properties whose origin and composition are a mystery?

It's origin and composition aren't entirely mysteries. Energy is one of the few things that are conserved for closed systems. So when we are doing calculations, it often helps to know what the energy is. That's not a great way of putting it, since one may ask, "What is a closed system?"

But the answer to that question, while it is in fact very subtle, is more or less what you think it is.

 

[Rade]

What is energy ? E = M c^2

 

[vanesch]

My question only seems meaningless if the meaning of my question escapes you as it does me. The meaning of my inquiry escapes me and that is the motivation behind my inquiry.

I concur with Zz about the meaninglessness of the question (in the sense that he explained: not a criticism). The question "what is energy made of" implies several premisses that are not true. The question "what is X made of" has a meaning in the following sense: X can be seen as a collection of other things Y in a certain structure, of more fundamental nature, such that by considering things Y together, we understand aspects of the behaviour/appearance... of X.
This is what happens when you say that cars are made of mechanical and electronic pieces of equipment, that wood is made of organic fibres, that a block of iron is made of iron atoms...
But this hierarchical structure does not always hold, for all concepts, and for these concepts, the question then becomes meaningless, like: "what's the CPU clock speed of a bucket of water" or something.
Now, maybe one day we might have a formulation of nature in which, what we now call "energy" is in the end, represented by a hierarchical structure of some kind, and then the question might have a meaning. Or maybe not. But, energy being a *theoretical concept*, its only existence being made up of its theoretical definition, and not corresponding to something "out there", as it stands, as a theoretical concept, it has not more meaning to ask "what is energy made of" than to ask "what is diameter made of".

 

[eep]

I really like the "energy is a property of the system" answer. That really does explain it best.

 

[quantumcarl]

I concur with Zz about the meaninglessness of the question (in the sense that he explained: not a criticism). The question "what is energy made of" implies several premisses that are not true. The question "what is X made of" has a meaning in the following sense: X can be seen as a collection of other things Y in a certain structure, of more fundamental nature, such that by considering things Y together, we understand aspects of the behaviour/appearance... of X.
This is what happens when you say that cars are made of mechanical and electronic pieces of equipment, that wood is made of organic fibres, that a block of iron is made of iron atoms...
But this hierarchical structure does not always hold, for all concepts, and for these concepts, the question then becomes meaningless, like: "what's the CPU clock speed of a bucket of water" or something.
Now, maybe one day we might have a formulation of nature in which, what we now call "energy" is in the end, represented by a hierarchical structure of some kind, and then the question might have a meaning. Or maybe not. But, energy being a *theoretical concept*, its only existence being made up of its theoretical definition, and not corresponding to something "out there", as it stands, as a theoretical concept, it has not more meaning to ask "what is energy made of" than to ask "what is diameter made of".

But, energy being a *theoretical concept*, its only existence being made up of its theoretical definition, and not corresponding to something "out there", as it stands, as a theoretical concept, it has not more meaning to ask "what is energy made of" than to ask "what is diameter made of"

So that, when measuring amounts of energy with say, calories or gigajoules or Mc2 we are only measuring a theoretical concept?

Is this similar to the measurment of other things like light in "photons"... gravity in "gravitons"? Is this all theoretical terminology and nothing more? Ee ghads.

No criticism taken. Thank you all for your interest in this idea.

 

[moving finger]

Eventually it's going to boil down to something fundamental that isn't made up of anything else but itself.

So in short energy is made up of energy. You've got to stop somewhere.

I prefer the "energy is a property" idea.

Just like "time" and "space" are properties. We do not say that "time is made up of time", nor do we say that "space is made up of space". Time and space are properties of the world, that we measure by the way that we interact with the rest of the world. Energy is in the same category.

Best Regards

MF

 

[3trQN]

I really like the "energy is a property of the system" answer. That really does explain it best.

Is energy then only a property of a Dynamic system? Times arrow and all that ;)

I have allways looked at it as a numerical value representing change, in that energy quantifies work or change. I like the information theory point of view more and more though. E=mc^2 is obviously etched into my mind also.

 

[Ratzinger]

Energy is a quantity that describes motion. Whereas the vector quantities velocity and momentum compare motion over distances, the scalar quantity energy is needed to compare motion over time.

Energy measures motion, but in a different way than momentum does.

 

[vanesch]

Is this similar to the measurment of other things like light in "photons"... gravity in "gravitons"? Is this all theoretical terminology and nothing more? Ee ghads.

In order even to say that you "measured an energy", you need a theoretical interpretation of your measurement.
(and yes, photons and all that, you also need a theoretical interpretation).

 

[cartuz]

I suppose that the energy is the quadratic characteristic on the coordinates and momentums of the isolated system that doesn't change in the space and time.

 

[quantumcarl]

In order even to say that you "measured an energy", you need a theoretical interpretation of your measurement.
(and yes, photons and all that, you also need a theoretical interpretation).

Thanks vanesch. I get that inches are a theoretical measurment or cubits in that they are decided upon arbitrarily or with reference to something else like an actual object for instance a "foot". This is why it gets confusing for me because I don't know what the physical reference material for a "photon" or a "graviton" is... or, for that matter, a calorie and so on.

If energy is a physical property does that mean energy itself is physical or is it an aphysical, theoretical property of a physical condition?

For instance, a property of water is that its wet. "Wetness" is entirely dependent on water. But it is a property that can only be determined in comparison to "dryness". Is the property of energy only determinable by comparison to a lack of energy or, perhaps when its compared to "entropy"?

(edit) Light and heat are properties of fire and energy is a property of both light and heat. Both light and heat have no mass yet energy remains as a property of them.

If Energy = Mass and light squared does that mean energy is as physical as mass and light or is the equivilency meant to be theoretical in terms of measurement?

Light has only what physicists call "relative" mass yet, apparently, energy is a property of light. I suppose this is why light is included in Einstein's equation.

Does the "relative" in "relative mass" refer to the fact that when light is occurring there is "something" occurring... as compared and relative to nothing occurring at all?

(Please forgive my ignorance to do with this subject)

 

[Dense]

Can anyone please tell me what energy is made of?

The problem with this question is that it presupposes that energy is something, and that this something can be made of something. These presuppositions are both wrong.

Having been told that, you should now be asking yourself "so what IS energy?" Which is both a better question, as well as an answerable one.

Energy is that quality of a phenomenon that enables change to occur. In other words, energy is not a thing unto itself, but rather a word we use to refer to the ability of a system to change. The more something is able to change, the more energy we say it has.

All the different kinds of energy you hear about (potential energy, kinetic energy, vacuum energy, zero-point energy) are just different ways of talking about the same thing.

 

[selfAdjoint]

If energy is a physical property does that mean energy itself is physical or is it an aphysical, theoretical property of a physical condition?

You throw a ball to someone else. Is the motion of the ball physical? Yes in the sense that it is completely the property of a physical thing and is produced by physical causes. No in that it is not itself a physical thing.

Hold that thought; energy has something of the status of motion, and you can use insights about motion to suggest ways to think about energy.

Now ask your question about motion; what is motion made of? Are there atoms of motion? Evidently motion can be made as small (in distance or speed) is you like, even the Planck length isn't literally a lower limit, it's just that mysterious things that physics doesn't yet understand happen when things get that small. Same with energy; QFT says an electron can emit a photon of arbitrarily low energy (=arbitrarily long wavelength). So it doesn't look as if either motion or energy can be thought of as made of standard pieces like "atoms".

Suppose I suggested that all energy comes from
1) Motion of particles, and
2) Emission and absorption of particles.

Would anybody (at least any quantum partisans) disagree?

 

[masudr]

Well, gravitational energy in GR; now that's a whole new ball game. And also classical concepts of energy is not considered in your suggestion.

CM: energy is the quantity conserved due to time translation invariance of the Lagrangian. QM: The quantity which generates infinitesimal time translations of the state.

But perhaps the original poster may have to learn a fair amount of mathematical machinery to learn before they can understand that. Is there a simpler way to define energy for completely general systems?

 

[pivoxa15]

In many ways energy is like money and has been described this way in physics textbooks like Halliday&Resnick. Would you ask what money is made of? Asking that question shows you have no understanding of money for it is used to keep a quantitative check on resourse allocation. It is an idea, a concept. Similarily energy is also a convinent intangible thing to use to keep a quantitive check on physical systems which might change due to forces. Just like money may be compared (or in the old days defined) to something tangible like gold, energy is defined to be 1Nm or imagine accelerating 1kg of stuff at 1m/s^2 for a distance of 1m. Alternatively, it may be easier imaging lifiting 1kg of stuff upward, against Earth's gravitational field by 10cm. In both cases you would have spent 1joule of energy which is the base unit of energy. From this you should see that energy is intrinsically conceptual and not materialistic even though you can use tangible things to illustrate this idea.

 

[vanesch]

In many ways energy is like money and has been described this way in physics textbooks like Halliday&Resnick. Would you ask what money is made of? Asking that question shows you have no understanding of money for it is used to keep a quantitative check on resourse allocation.

The problem with that analogy is that you could naively say that money "is made up of coins and bills" :tongue2:

 

[selfAdjoint]

The problem with that analogy is that you could naively say that money "is made up of coins and bills" :tongue2:

Not for a century and more. Even Marx knew better. It's made up of transfers between accounts. Physical currency is just a convenience, a very small portion of the money supply.

 

[quantumcarl]

Not for a century and more. Even Marx knew better. It's made up of transfers between accounts. Physical currency is just a convenience, a very small portion of the money supply.

OK, I'm getting some great insight into energy now. Thanks to all of you!

Drawing a comparison between money and energy is cute. But, you can draw the same comparison between energy and anything if we follow the definitions of energy given in this thread.

For instance money only represents potential expenditure of energy. Without its interaction in as a trading tool it does not represent energy... it simply represents a record of something traded.

A piece of wood is potential energy... like money. It is a record of the growth of a tree and how it traded with the soil, sun and rain to become wood.

Wood requires interaction with other elements, just like money does, in order to release the energy (or information) stored in the wood (or the money)... for example... the wood needs a flame to release the energies involved with heat and light. The wood needs hammers, nails and carpenters to realize it's potential energy of a shelter. And so on.

So, energy, in my unmathematical opinion, starts looking like it is synomonous with potential.

Energy appears to be a way of describing the potential of an object or system to change and to change into something else... useful or otherwise... and many of you have already said that.

However, the "transfer of energy" makes it seem different than potential. How is it that energy can "transfer" if it is not a transferable "substance"? Is the transfer of energy simply what we call "cause and effect"?

 

[quantumcarl]

Maybe I'm getting it even more now!

When Albert Einstein came up with 'E=Mc^2' he basically said that mass and the speed of light (squared for some reason?) contains information that can be called energy.

For instance Dr. Einstein said: when the mass and the speed that is represented by a hammer (and a carpenter wielding the hammer) hits a nail, the information that is the mass and speed of the hammer is transferred into the nail.

The nail then reacts according to the information being transferred from the hammer and its condition of speed and mass and the transfer is transformed into the action of the nail (which is "controled" by the conditions surrounding the nail).

So, energy could be represented as "being made of" the information generated by mass and velocity (at any scale... as pivoxa15 and others have pointed out).

Thank you all for hammering that home!

 

[vanesch]

Not for a century and more. Even Marx knew better. It's made up of transfers between accounts. Physical currency is just a convenience, a very small portion of the money supply.

Ok then, so "money" is made of bills, coins, and charges on CMOS capacitors in bank computers.

Mmm, and I'm forgetting: some Poynting vectors in transmission lines too.

Hell, money seems to be essentially of electromagnetic origin, with a slight fermionic content, just like the universe :rofl:

Unless we're forgetting 95% of "dark money" of course

 

[selfAdjoint]

Money is a social abstraction; "An honest man's promise to pay" (from Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon, a story about an online real-time computer controlled economy written in 1939. The hero creates electronic games!

 

[quantumcarl]

Money is a social abstraction; "An honest man's promise to pay" (from Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon, a story about an online real-time computer controlled economy written in 1939. The hero creates electronic games!

Heinlein wrote some creepy stuff. Now we get to live it!

If the universe suddenly converted to a "paper" monetary system then the energy we get from the sun would be in the form of greenbacks and we'd all starve.

Otherwise, as it is, we get green leaves and wheatfields etc...

----- -- ----- - -- - -- - -- - ---- - -- -- -- - -- - - - - - - - -

There's a few other aspects of energy unsolved for me as yet.

For instance...

Storage of energy? Batteries can store the mass and motion of a waterfall or of windmills?

This involves transfering the information generated by (the mass and motion inherent in) a waterfall in the form of excited electrons, through a wire to a "rechargable battery". This battery is then somehow capable of "storing" a portion of the information about the mass and motion of a waterfall.

Then someone can transfer that information about the waterfall which is contained in the battery to a source of light, sound heat or another motion.

How is this possible?

 

[masudr]

Seriously: chill out about energy. Use the notion of energy in solving physics problems if you think it'll help. That's all there is to it.

Assigning reality to a human mathematical construct is overdoing it already; and here you're trying to develop a complicated set of unnecessary analogies. This is what I would call over-the-top.