Quote:
Originally Posted by CanAutM3
I am sorry if I seemed imprecise, it was my best effort to vulgarize.
All I can say is that throughout my engineering education and career, I have been taught and trained with the notion that energy is an indirectly observed quantity, a mathematical concept. Albeit a very powerful concept, one that allows the simplification of very complex physical models. Energy itself remains elusive, you cannot isolate energy in the real world. As you say, speed, temperature, distance, gravitation, electric charge, force, radiation, pressure, chemical links can all be correlated to energy levels. But what is energy? A very clever man went as far as deducing that even mass itself can be correlated to energy… but this could lead to metaphysical discussions not appropriate for a car forum  .
Hence, the same can be said of power, as it is the rate of change of energy.
Torque can be seen as the force component of the Newtonian equations in the angular referential, very real and measurable. And since we are on the topic of semantics and precision of language, I need to point out that torque is NOT "a force acting at a distance". Torque is fundamentally a twisting force, better represented as a pair of equal opposing linear forces acting at a perpendicular distance from each other  .
I guess there are many different schools of thought and it’s a free world, so everyone is entitled to believe what they want  . |
Missed your reply... Because you can't not see or touch something does not really make it less real. Perhaps less tactile but not less real. Calling things like energy or power "mathematical" it a bit belittling to the entire field of physics. I buy "indirectly observable" though.
I do appreciate your point about that "clever man" and yes we are headed there...
You need to replace "component" above with "analogue"! Otherwise that is not correct.
Lastly, I will also staunchly defend my prior definition of torque. It most basic definition is T = r x F, where the letters are vectors and x is the vector cross product. Two forces are very common but are absolutely not required. Even in the cases of rotating machinery such as ICEs, electric motors, turbines, etc. There are always actual linear forces involved which act at a distance to yield a torque. Sometimes there are a few linear forces, sometimes they have couples, sometimes not.
Cheers.