What is the nature of dendrothermal energy?

Nature of Energy and Matter

• Is is such a thing as 'pure matter' and 'pure energy', or is everything always a combination of energy and matter? EG: light being mostly energy and some matter, and rocks being mostly matter but some energy, for instance?

• Answer:

  Hi david The answer to your question depends on answers to several subquestions, like What is energy? what is matter? Are these two different physical quantities? and few more (like does it matter :-) and what is 'pure' ? These people http://www.learner.org/channel/workshops/energy/workshop1/ and most elementary textbooks say: "Energy is the ability to do work" I do not like this definition. It begs question: what is work? (applied energy?) and it is wrong as demonstrated by following thought experiment: --------------------\\ Imagine a rigid thermos [made of steel ..] (a box which will not allow any energy (thermal, mechanical, [magnetic ..]) pass it's walls. In the thermos there is flashlight, left on. Battery has (chemical) energy, which can run a small DC motor and so could 'do work' -- lift marbles or so.. But - box is closed and after few days battery cannot power the motor and 'do work'. Battery is 'dead' and chemical energy of battery was dissipated into heat, There is is still same amount of energy in the thermos, but that energy cannot 'do work'. That ability was lost. ----------------------------// So that definition is useless. So - what is energy and what is 'pure energy'? One way is to look at these EVOLVING concepts is historical. Other way to interpret the question in terms of current elementary particle theory. e.g. : there are photons - particles of light - which are hard to put into a test-tube (less impossible, lately) but hard. and there are things made of atoms,like water and air, which go well into test tube. BTW : ------------\\ Unless you keep these materials (made of atoms) at absolute zero (which is impossible to achieve) http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/dec96/835000890.Ph.r.html materials always have some (heat) energy. ------------------// These (atoms) are ultimately made of neutrons and electrons and protons and more ultimately of leptons and quarks. So that is one way to answer your question is (light is pure energy) even when it has 'relativistic mass' - it has no rest mass. There are other similar particles. Generally - that classification is here: There are particles and forces - brief history http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/particle/Theory/slides/rrr.pdf the proton and neutron - examples of baryons - are made of quarks. Fermions and Bosons http://www.shef.ac.uk/physics/teaching/phy304/fandb.html --------------------------- There is another issue here which has to do with relativity Are these two (energy and mass) different physical quantities? People keep quoting thus mantra E=Mc*c, we are even going to have an MC square in Princeton, with Einstein's statue, but I really wonder what does it mean to them. It does not mean that nuclear fission or fusion is possible; There are some historical connections, and they did use that when figuring the fission experiments, but it really is not about nuclear energy. It is more general than that. So what does it mean? Can someone elaborate? Hedgie