--- Steve Gray <stevebg@adelphia.net> wrote:
Try this. Energy is the capacity to do work. Work is force*distance. Let the work not accelerate anything but overcome friction at low speed. Let a 10 kg block sit on a table and have a coefficient of friction of 0.1, so the constant force to move it slowly (without acceleration) is 1 kg. If the energy in question is 4 kg-meters (converted suitably to common units), the block can be pushed 4 meters. This avoids time, velocity, and specific heat, keeping the whole thing purely mechanical for intuitive appeal.
Steve Gray
There seems to be a bit of confusion here between mass (a quantity of matter) and weight (the force due to gravity). A mass m (located on Earth's surface where g = 9.8 m/s^2 is the acceleration of gravity) has weight mg. So the 10 kg mass weighs 98 N (Newton = SI unit of force), and the work done in your example is 39.2 N m. Gene __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com