Ok /sci/, I'm a retard and I accept it. However I have a

I don't think a retard would ask such a question

>>7694038
Energy doesn't have a form, anon.

Do I exist, or am I simply a property of a biological system?

Nice question non-retarded anon,

Initially i think your second premise is correct, and that there is no universal object/substance of energy and that it is purely the excitation levels of objects in a system..

However what makes an excited object different from the same object a moment before excitation?

Anyone with lesser retardation than me willing to answer?

>>7694038
Energy doen't have a substance, but neither does anything else.

>>7694127
I meant substance in a philosophical manner. Anything that can exist on it's own is a substance. The classical example: a cheese is a substance, but the holes in it are not, since they wouldn't be anything without the cheese.

>>7694087
Do you mean existence rather than excitedness? The difference between an object in the state of existence and the same object before it existed is that the object did not exist, or was not, if you will. Before an object exists the system in which it will come to exist does not have the capability to contain such an object.

>>7694295
I did think you meant substance as physical matter, but my answer stands: Energy is a property of systems, not their parts.

I think it exists because it is the most useful concept invented or discovered by Man. By that measure, energy is more real than anything else. (does this make me a platonist?).

>>7694038
I actually like your question anon.

I like to think of it like this:

A potential energy function is the solution to a differential equation which gives information about work being done. (Sometimes the solution to a DE is called the potential function for this reason.)

Energy functions are just a way for us to quantify what is happening in the world around us. They do not have any physical form, they are just predictive models which allow us to guess what might happen in the future.

I could go on about my personal thoughts on models in general, but only if someone is actually interested. It is kind of long winded.

Isn't it simple? Take an electric current for an example. It's a form of energy which we use to power many tools we use nowadays, I don't think I need to say which. It is essentially a stream of electrons in this case.

Energy is very much real and takes many forms, just like matter does.

Energy is a property of matter.

>>7694038
Not an intellectual person, but energy exist, without a form. Energy can ender different things, In different shapes.
Example: An apple grows from suns energy and becomes something edible with calories. Calories are energy for a person.
Then we have electricity and the like.
Energy cannot be seen, and may only take forms.
[spoiler] I am a very simple and non-intellectual person. I have not had any studies from energy, So I am very sorry if I'm wrong. [/spoiler]

>>7694751
I've done three courses of physics in high-school and I'm currently focusing my studies in philosophy, so I wouldn't define a person's worth in a discussion by their education, but rather by the ideas they present. The value of a discussion is not the sum of its participants, but the education of the participants.

An apple tree uses energy of the sun to store energy into the apple, which a person can eat to gain some of that energy. However, the energy seems to not truly exist. More so the energy is just a presentation of systems capability of doing work. Sun is a system that does work when it radiates light and heat. An apple tree absorbs the light, and so gets some of the photons potential to do work. The apple tree is also a system that has now capability to work out an apple, in which some of the capability to work is stored. You probably get the picture already. I would therefore say that energy can not exist by itself, but is also the representation of a systems capability to do work. And so energy doesn't exist, only the system and the work it is doing. (Because if there is a possibility of work happening, it will, as stated by the materialistic premises of the discussion.)

Energy is literally a measurement of a systems ability to do work.

>>7694874
underrated thread

And then to the actually hard questions: I think that in some rare cases it is possible that energy transforms into matter or vice versa, right? Is that process only that particles that are so small that they don't classify as matter, do work to form themselves into matter?

>>7696047
Reformatting the last sentence so it has less 'that's: Is the process of energy forming matter or matter turning into energy just a process of particles too small to classify as matter doing work according to their capabilities to manifest as matter?

>>7695197
I've never liked that description.
Work doesn't sound scientific.
I prefer something more along the lines of referring to movement or interactions.
Work sounds pre-science.

File: fuck.png (56KB, 181x171px) Image search: [Google]

56KB, 181x171px

>>7696047
>have insomnia
>haven't had much sleep the past few days
>browsing 4chan before bed
>randomly click on /sci/ to see what's here
>see your post
>have actually wondered about that before
>now I have to stay up to see the reply

work [wəːk/] noun

activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a result.
"he was tired after a day's work in the fields"
synonyms:labour,toil,exertion,effort,slog,drudgery,the sweat of one's brow;

In this case the work we are talking about is exactly physical effort done in order to achieve a result. Movement and interaction are types of work.

>>7696047
Well yeah, what do you think e=mc^2 means? We usually see it in nuclear reactions.

>>7696089
I have never studied physics so far I'd had done anything with e=mc^2 (I do know what it means, though) so I had to ask if my knowledge was correct. Did you answer the second question, though? I don't see how e=mc^2 relates to sub-matter sized particles, unless they, or the work the are capable off, is what we call energy. Which it might just be now when I think.

Someone is going to get mad at me for saying this, but if you really want an answer to this question check out Quora, there's a ton of professors and general smart folk that hang out there

>>7694038
This question is the same as "does momentum truly exist."

[can't be bothered to type out the math, or put in the explanatory effort to be properly accurate; HANDWAVING MODE ENGAGED.]

In fact, in special relativity, momentum and energy are the same thing. Newtonian physics talks about position, velocity, and momentum in three-dimensional vectors: <x, y, z>. But relativity talks about 4-dimensional vectors in space-time, and so includes a timewise component - <x, y, z, t>.

When you analyze momentum this way, the fourth component - momentum along the time axis - turns out to be energy. Energy is momentum in the time direction. (And mass is the momentum that you have in the time direction, even while standing still in space.)

There's also potential energy, which is stored in fields.

As for the answer - well, that's difficult to say. I think your problem is more conceptual than anything - what would having "energy without the system" even *mean*? There's no such thing as "pure energy", but there's also no such thing as "pure mass" or "pure momentum" or "pure spin" or "pure charge" or whatever.

So, uh, I guess the answer is "No, energy isn't a thing on its own. It's a property of objects, and their relationship to each other through fields. But you're really asking the wrong questions here."

I have a different question in the same spirit as OP. Is physics truly "larger" than the universe, or does it just describe parts of reality? If we find a waveform or whatever to describe the entire universe, would you be able to plug it into some fundamental equation and know everything? or is it hopeless because reality will always be more complex than mathematics can possibly explain?

>>7696165
>would you be able to plug it into some fundamental equation and know everything?

No. You'd be able to *predict* everything that actually happens, if you had a magical computer which could actually run it.

But we already don't know everything about the physics we already have equations for. We don't really know how high-temperature superconductivity works, for instance, even though we're quite sure it requires only the fundamental laws of physics we already know to explain. And we don't know everything about the human body, either, even though we know it's all just atoms and we know how atoms work.

>>7696118
Sorry, I have no idea what you mean by sub-matter particles

i had similar questions when introduced to the concept of mechanical energy. things like kinetic and potential energy just seem like constructs that are useful for predicting and describing the behavior of the physical world. i assume a better understanding of what energy is will come later in more advanced classes

If there is pure energy without system, its called photon. Photons have no other conservative property than energy. And maybe all energy can be described as photons.
Im no quantumphys, but photons are the virtual transmitter particles of EM force, so the EM potencial can be seen as a bunch of photons. (I know, that virtual bosons arent holding energy in the current model, but as I understood they can be seen as a higher "vacuum fluctuation" due to increased potential.)