What is energy, in its simple form?

[CTG Labs]

Surely a magnet can do work on its own.  If you place a magnet on your fridge it will stay there forever doing work to resist falling/being pulled down by gravity?



D.

[CTG Labs]

The current definition of "Energy is the ability to do work" is not really telling us what energy is.  Man is the ability to catch fish, but this is not what man is, just something he can do!



D.

[Low-Q]

Surely a magnet can do work on its own.  If you place a magnet on your fridge it will stay there forever doing work to resist falling/being pulled down by gravity?



D.

A hook can then do work, by being hooked up into something and do work because it doesn't fall down? I don't think so. Please explain what you mean

Br.

Vidar

[CTG Labs]

I see your point, but a magnetic field is being sourced by energy which is continuously supplied forever and its that magnetic field that does work on the metal of the fridge to prevent it from falling.

Of course a hook will prevent something from falling, but its not a field effect which is being continuously supplied with energy.

Well, perhaps I am just talking crap, I mean what do I know anyway...!


Dave.

[ChileanOne]

I'm glad to see this discussion taking place. Most of us are not experts in the matter, which, contrary to a first thought, may be an actual advantage as we are not burdened by years of programming preventing us to get to the truth.

I have been wondering on how the concept of energy as being force x distance is a practical but not at all encompassing conceptual interpretation.

We have forces being provided by magnetic and or gravitational fields. The traditional physics say that one stores energy by moving an objet against the force field direction (we apply a force equal than the exerted by the field and we move the object a distance, so we get a Potential Energy stored in the object).

I have been wondering if energy could be described as a derivative of a force field against distance AND time. It is supposed that force fields are time invariant.

I have been following Steorn claims. There they have found that magnetic fields are indeed time variant, so they found a loophole where an potential energy can be gained out of a time variation of the field itself, thus, allowing for the creation (and also destruction) of energy! Holly CoE, we have a leak in the theory!

The best analogy I can find is like if we could find a time variation in gravity, we could lift a mass in the moment of weaker gravity and let it fall in a moment of strong gravity, thus creating energy out of the field itself!, we could als destroy energy by doing the opossite.

I think Milkovic's pendulums somehow exploit a loophole in gravity fields time invariance.

Can we get time inside the F x D expression? Can we? Can We?

I suspect the answer is lurking very near.