I have a rusty 50 year old degree in chemistry which I used to get into medical school, but I've finally retired and am trying to dust off and modernize my mental library of basic science. I used to think of this guy's videos as a sort of circus side show - freakish enough to attract attention but a bit light on substance. I clicked on this video because my brain was still aching from watching multiple SpaceTime vids, and I needed a cool-down of some sort. Instead I got an epiphany - NIck's a genius wrapped in several kilos of faux nutcase. This is easily the clearest explanation of the relation between force, work and energy I've ever seen. The little interludes of "insanity" which I used to see as irritating dork-outs (e.g. singing along to work themed songs) actually seem to serve a purpose - they're little cognitive time-outs to allow digestion of the preceding dose of facts. So, Nick, I badly misunderestimated you; this is good stuff. I'm going to dive into your backlog of videos, which I suspect contains a number of deceptively coherent gems of insight like this.
How did you describe this better than PBS Space Time? They just confused me and made me second guess what i thought i knew... and you just restored that confidence that I was right to begin with. Thanks!
@@mrana2424 To be honest PBS Space Time is not suitable for the average person. They get way too detailed for someone without a background in physics and math. I love the channel and the effort they put into it, but it's not made for highschool students for the most part.
Yeah same here, except I was confused about energy from the begining amd pbs space times video just made it more confusing.But this was a real life saver for me.
Don't say that. He already is a mad scientist 🤪, but he Potentially can become a megalomaniac mad scientist, you know, the kind that says "MUHUHU MUHAHA I shall destroy you all...You miserable beings". Your comment could Work on his mind.
Work is just like speed(the distance travelled in certain amount of time), but the distance that the object will or have travelled with certain amount of force
Physics has a lot of "explanations" for energy, though this was certainly one of the better ones I've seen. But it only really describes energy.. it doesn't really tell us what it is. That's not super surprising though given that physics has exactly the same problem when trying to explain basically every fundamental property of the universe.. try explaining spin, or even a really common one like electric charge that you think we'd have nailed down given the success of QED. But it (currently) can't be explained -- its just a number we assign to particles to describe how they interact with things, because it lets us do math and make predictions and that's very useful to us. These aren't questions that will be answered soon. Probably not in the lifetime of anyone living today -- probing matter to that level is likely centuries ahead of us, if its even possible, barring a fluke discovery. So for now, we're stuck with just really good descriptions like Nick just gave us and try not to think too much about what it all means at a deeper level. Unless you're a particle physicist and that's your job, of course!
@@altrag Its impossible to find out what substance particles and even energy (if it is a substance) is because simply we can't see it, even if we see it someday we may not be able to explain what we saw and if you belive in God pray to give you some light to your difficult for science question...
+Argie88 "Seeing" is a relatively loose term when it comes to physics. We can't see protons, electrons, quarks, etc. Even things as large as viruses and bacteria can't be seen with the naked eye. You could argue that a simple lens still falls in the realm of "seeing" since its just focusing the same wavelengths of light our eyes pick up normally, you still lose that by the time you hit electron microscopes and other such things. We're only seeing machine-generated visualizations of the things those devices are observing. On the other end of the scale, most astrophysics is "observed" in radio wavelengths, xray, infrared, etc -- wavelengths that again we can't "see" without help from technology. And even on the human scale, things like CAT, MRI, Xray machines, etc let us "see" things that would otherwise be impossible. In that case, not because we couldn't necessarily look directly but because doing so has some pretty negative consequences (ie: having to cut the person up!) Anyway, point is that just because we don't know how to "see" it with our current technology and understanding of physics, doesn't mean we will never be able to. String theory for example, if it pans out, may give us a lot more insight into these things. But even if its true, our currently-largest detector (the LHC) is still many orders of magnitude too weak to even think about "seeing" strings or testing string theory predictions. Sadly I don't expect us to reach the necessary energy levels within my lifetime, but you never know -- maybe some clever person will come up with a completely new style of detector that scales better than just trying to smash things together harder and harder.
@@altrag Well technically even if you explained those things, you'd then be like "Explain those things" I think at some point if you don't want an infinite regress you have to just say "IT JUST IS!"
It has been a long time since I heard "Working in a coal mine" sung. It was on the charts in 1966 when I was a freshman in high school. When I took physics in high school I had to use a slide rule because there were no pocket calculators yet. It is lot easier these days with all the tech help. If you were going to make this video back then you would be using film to do it. But then you wouldn't have an Internet to upload it to either. Things have changed a lot since that song was on the air. Thanks for the memory trigger. Us old folks do a lot of that living in the past stuff. :-) Seriously, you put a lot of energy into your videos and you do a good job. Keep up the good work! (W = F x D).
Nicely said, it’s calculated by two variables intensive by the extensive eg pressure times volume is expansion energy. Voltage times charge is electrical energy. There is no such thing as energy outside our mind it’s a construction of the cleverest kind a sort of mathematical sleight of hand.
Alas, in physics you have to do the math too but showing us the concepts is what Nick does well. The media uses Force, Energy, Power, Work and more as colloquial terms but each has a specific and different meaning in physics.
This video has seemingly cleared all my doubts regarding the concept of energy. All the content in textbooks never really defined work or energy properly. But this video has probably cleared all those confusions regarding the topic. Much appreciation to all the force x displacement you have put into this video. Loads of Gratitude.
I cant stop watching, this UA-cam channel succeeds at having an addicting flow while maintaining a high degree of technical, foundational information. I look forward to my brain post binge.
I had some questions before but your videos are really helping. Keep making these videos as you are helping a lot of students who are not having teachers as good as you.👍👍👍👍
Just SUPERB ! What clarity of understanding and presentation ! Nick has terrific Energy and does such great Work for all of us !!! Thank you Nick and thanks to your clone. But for him this video would not have been the complete gem that it now is ! This video must be one of the opening video in all classes of Physics and Engineering. Nick you really deserve an honorary professorship at an elite University. BTW, is your last name really Lucid ? Or is it a "nick" that someone bestowed on you to describe the quality of your educational videos ?!
I used one of your videos from 2015 to help explain to others what E=mc^2 means. I then ended up watching a not so small portion of your videos from the intervening years till now. I think I have gathered more understanding, and along the way I might have incidentally memorized your profile. Thanks for keeping up with the explanations and production.
This was genuinely useful for me and answered many questions. Really appreciate the effort you put in to these, I wish more people would open their minds to content like this.
Related to the point about energy either being kinetic or potential energy, I think the slide at 5:15 that shows various formulas for different types of energy really ties that point together. Just glancing at the formulas you can quickly see that they fall into expressions similar to “mass times expression related to position” (potential) or “mass times something related to velocity squared” (kinetic). Notice how none of those formulas use the square of the mass, for example, energy always scales linearly with the (rest) mass. It shows how everything boils down to individual particles moving or being in a position where a force will move them. Or in the case of a massless particle like a photon the ability of the particle to move something else.
That's a great observation, Doug. Thank you. Now this puts a twist to my question about "what are 'things' in fundamental physics: quantum fields and space time?", which I posited above. In all those formulas it seems to be "something with mass", but mass we know is nothing but "concentrated energy" (mostly the gluon field, also the Higgs field to a minor extent), so it would seem like I'm reaching a point of circular logic here. Is thus energy the potential to move or modify other energy?
Luis Aldamiz Energy is a property of things and not every thing has mass. A photon for example is massless but has energy equal to its frequency times a constant. The mass of something (by which I mean the rest mass) is, as you said, actually a placeholder for what might be considered energy that is potentially available but not going to be used in a given interaction the equations are evaluating. But hypothetically if an interaction converted all of something with rest mass entirely into photons then the resulting set of photons would collectively have the same amount of energy as the original object plus the energy of its rest mass E=mc^2. It’s just that in most situations the rest mass isn’t changing so is constant on both sides of energy conversion equations. What I’m getting at is a photon isn’t just energy, energy is a property that a photon has just like it has a frequency and a wavelength. The photon is a thing and when we talk about what that thing is capable of doing in the world we can calculate those effects using the values of its properties. Energy is the property that tells you how much effect a thing might be able to have on other things but isn’t by itself a thing.
But in QFT, a photon is not "a thing" but a wavefunction, a vibration in a field (the photon field specifically) that pervades all space. All particles are just waves, the most honest quantum physicists acknowledge that openly nowadays and waves are not "things" but vibrational energy of something else, the corresponding quantum field or more generally space (as all quantum fields exist in all space, even if they are at rest). Same for gluons, or more specifically the gluon field, which is incidentally the main culprit of mass and thus of "thingness" as we usually consider it, with the difference that photons are practically everywhere (even in darkness there's heat and radiation) while gluons are only in very specific locations at any given instant (outside atomic nuclei there are no gluons but there is still gluon field at value zero, else gluons, and nuclei and atoms, would not be able to move: where to if there were no gluon field to be charged with their vibrational energy?) So that's my conundrum: particles seem to be nothing but vibrational energy, so what is "something" then: quantum fields? Is ultimately all work reduced to moving energy through those fields (and thus through space) and acting on other such vibrational energies (particles)? It'd seem so.
Luis Aldamiz In short, yes, perturbations of quantum fields are things. Energy is not a thing, it’s numerical property of those disruptions in the fields, essentially a numerical accounting device.
Numbers alone do nothing: thus energy is something more than just "a numerical property" because it makes work. Energy seems to be a some-THING operating in the other some-THING which is space-time (or space and time as separated parameters when convenient). As far as I can tell those are the fabric of the Universe and we are all made of them.
"If you can change that energy from one type to another, or move it from one object to another, you're doing work." @5:19 This is the definition that I think exists at the crux of what work is, but the more abstract definition presented at the beginning of this video covers even this. Thanks! Food for thought!
This is such a clean definition! I hear so many quantum spirituality nuts talking about energy but none of them can explain what it is... so thanks a lot for this.
It couldn't be explained any simpler. Thanks nick :) I'm rebuilding my fundumentals. They're vary important if I'm going to study more advanced physics in the future. Like analytical mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, etc
You’re a great teacher, thank you for making these videos for us. It is almost unbelievable how people can live their whole lives without even trying to understand what IS the world surrounding them. I’m watching this video because I have many questions that need answers.
I have the answers, Tommy. In order to truly know anything at all, you must first find "the Philosopher's Stone," which is the fact that "GOD" is the Mind that is ALL. You will then know precisely what ENERGY is - and what MATTER is, since matter is but a form of energy. All is THOUGHT in the Mind that is God! Any other questions? (I don't receive UA-cam comments, but seekers can easily find me.)
Hi Nick ! I just wanna share something personal with you. Back in 2012, during my high school years, I had a Physics teacher who taught us Newtonian Mechanics and Electricity & Magnetism. He changed my life completely, by not just making me fall in love with him as a teacher but more importantly with the beautiful subject 'Physics'. The way he explained everything, giving us proper definitions and examples to illustrate various concepts/laws, along with mathematical proofs for the most general cases, employing vectors and calculus (both differential and integral) to do so, completely mesmerized me. All the topics were covered by him in a very systematic, step-by-step fashion, from the fundamentals to the most difficult of concepts, leaving no room for confusion and making problem solving fun and easy. He remains the best Physics teacher I have seen in my life, better than Walter Lewin or Neil deGrasse Tyson or just about anyone I have come across in the last 7 years. I have often felt very sad about the shortage of such extraordinary teachers in the world, which is perhaps the biggest reason why students never realize the beauty of Physics. Just a week or two ago, I discovered this channel 'The Science Asylum'. Having watched this video on Energy (and a few more on your channel), I am convinced that your way of teaching very much resembles that of my Physics teacher back in the day. You are truly a legend, just like him. The way you cover the fundamentals, especially the definitions, with proper animations and examples, is exactly what is needed to make students fall in love with Physics. In this world where students are drifting away from science, you are a ray of hope ! I admire and respect you from the bottom of my heart. I will recommend your videos to as many people as I can in my life. Keep up your brilliant work of educating the public ! Love from India !!!
This video about how relative the concept of energy is, helped me understand entropy better. And why the "heat death" of the universe is a consequence of all of the "work" already being done. Thanks Nick!
Ha, that was again super! Totally precise and still good understandable, even for someone a little crazy! Ha, these explainings are worth their weight or potential energy in gold!! (thus thanx for sharing all the most interesting and usefull stuff with us for free!)
This guy is so fun to watch, even if I get lost sometimes. But he finally made me laugh out loud (by myself) with that little go to work dance. 😄 Caught me off guard.
3rd generation toyota camry. First and last year made 92-96. Great choice in transportation prefrence it will run forever. I use to have one the same color😁
Sou do Brasil. Gostei muito do seu canal, até me inscrevi e estou assistindo vários vídeos. Obrigado pelas legendas em português, me ajuda muito pois não compreendo muito o inglês. Forte abraço!!
The guy who translates to Portuguese is really good! We talk sometimes when he's not sure what words to use. I've learned a lot about Portuguese from those conversations.
The Science Asylum so, since mass is just a property of energy (m=e/c^2), and energy curves space, is that curvature relative to the observer, or is it universal? If universal, does that mean energy is "real", not just a property?
Its relative (hence "general relativity.") But the relationships in GR are far, far more complicated than the "simple" Lorentz transformation from special relativity. I suspect it would be very difficult (maybe impossible) to formulate GR in such a way as to "flatten" spacetime in a particular frame of reference. More likely, everyone would see a curved spacetime, but not necessarily curved in exactly the same way as everyone else sees it.
@@altrag So, gravity is relative? Is the mass and gravity of, say, the Earth affected by relative velocity? Would someone in a train (trains seem to be the 'standard' relativity thought experiment vehicle) see the earth as having a different mass than someone at the station, and therefore weigh less?
Phew. I'm often overwhelmed by these videos and am not sure if I get anything out of them. If I ever develop proper long range nukes, it will be thanks to you.
Wouldn't you have technically done work when you were pushing on the car? Energy was used to move your muscles and probably to do other things like raise your heart rate. If we're going to define work as something happening then something was happening when you pushed the car, even though your goal to move the car wasn't changed at all. I know it's nitpicking but I can't help myself.
No no, this is a great question! Just like energy, work has to be "attached" to an object. With the car, no work was done on the car because it didn't move. But, you're right, lots of work was done on my body because chemicals moved around and reacted inside it.
Thanks for asking this question. I was always confused in class by the concept of pushing a wall as hard as you can for an hour, losing a lot of energy from your body, yet having done no work.
When pushing on a stationary object no work is done on the object. Also your muscles aren't moving so they don't do any work. Yet your body is using (converting) energy.... but why?
1:18 axiom's are introduced that depending on your philosophy on numbers would change the meaning of this video drastically I think. This is a very well-crafted and explained video that basically goes in one big circle and to sum it all up just basically says all physical Concepts are explanations of observations. It is a true statement but this definition of energy is unsatisfying to me I think the real question is why is there a potential for something to be done rather than not. Excellent video that left me wanting more.
Very nice video! Thanks for the work! I anyway feel that the energy definition we can get through Emily Noether's theorem is my favorite: "energy is the conserved quantity associated to time translation symmetry invariance". It's slightly more abstract, but very beautiful.
Great video. Really helps me understand the concept. Could you do a video in the future about the pauli exclusion principle? I had some trouble wrapping my head around it.
You did a great job of describing many of the different types of potential and kinetic energies, and how they relate to Work. I gotta tell ya though, my instincts are screaming at me, telling me that there is a much simpler underlying principal or meaning; a simpler way of understanding energy such that all of these energies are just manifestations or perspectives of that quintessence. Or it could just be that spicy taco I just ate.
Very appreciated and honest effort. I used to think that energy is something material. Now I am beginning to doubt that it might be an immaterial thing.
For example, Nick converts the energy he has into awesome videos. That's not work, that's great work.
Well said, man 😀
And great singing
Nick has fast fast energy!
great great work
Mamalo
I have a rusty 50 year old degree in chemistry which I used to get into medical school, but I've finally retired and am trying to dust off and modernize my mental library of basic science. I used to think of this guy's videos as a sort of circus side show - freakish enough to attract attention but a bit light on substance. I clicked on this video because my brain was still aching from watching multiple SpaceTime vids, and I needed a cool-down of some sort. Instead I got an epiphany - NIck's a genius wrapped in several kilos of faux nutcase. This is easily the clearest explanation of the relation between force, work and energy I've ever seen. The little interludes of "insanity" which I used to see as irritating dork-outs (e.g. singing along to work themed songs) actually seem to serve a purpose - they're little cognitive time-outs to allow digestion of the preceding dose of facts.
So, Nick, I badly misunderestimated you; this is good stuff. I'm going to dive into your backlog of videos, which I suspect contains a number of deceptively coherent gems of insight like this.
kudos to you for admitting and wording it out! needs something.
Not all superheroes wear a cape. Some wear lab-coats!
El Psy Congroo
@@fgvcosmic6752
Steins Gate reference lol
FGV Cosmic Now this is where it's at
@Flash Fordon, he means Nick
@@fgvcosmic6752 You are a legend. Lol.
Thank God for the Clone for forcing you to give us more info. :))
How did you describe this better than PBS Space Time? They just confused me and made me second guess what i thought i knew... and you just restored that confidence that I was right to begin with. Thanks!
You're welcome :-)
The Science Asylum I think you are better than they are as well
@@mrana2424 To be honest PBS Space Time is not suitable for the average person. They get way too detailed for someone without a background in physics and math. I love the channel and the effort they put into it, but it's not made for highschool students for the most part.
in physics if you are shure about what you know, then you don´t not nothing at all
Yeah same here, except I was confused about energy from the begining amd pbs space times video just made it more confusing.But this was a real life saver for me.
A week of classes in eight minutes
....
You are great man..
@Sierra Sparkle's yep
Don't say that. He already is a mad scientist 🤪, but he Potentially can become a megalomaniac mad scientist, you know, the kind that says "MUHUHU MUHAHA I shall destroy you all...You miserable beings". Your comment could Work on his mind.
Not the same. You still need to go through all the math to understand it all. This video is not a replacement for studying.
@@persiathiest1963 well said
In my case, 19 years of confusion resolved in eight minutes.
This channel has given me the best understanding of physics!! Thank you!
You're welcome!
I prove and disprove theories and, I am studying physics from this group. He done great work
Work is just like speed(the distance travelled in certain amount of time), but the distance that the object will or have travelled with certain amount of force
I didn't even know physics had an explanation for energy(like this one)!!! Perfect work, now i understand the universe much better!!! Thanks!!
Physics has a lot of "explanations" for energy, though this was certainly one of the better ones I've seen.
But it only really describes energy.. it doesn't really tell us what it is. That's not super surprising though given that physics has exactly the same problem when trying to explain basically every fundamental property of the universe.. try explaining spin, or even a really common one like electric charge that you think we'd have nailed down given the success of QED. But it (currently) can't be explained -- its just a number we assign to particles to describe how they interact with things, because it lets us do math and make predictions and that's very useful to us.
These aren't questions that will be answered soon. Probably not in the lifetime of anyone living today -- probing matter to that level is likely centuries ahead of us, if its even possible, barring a fluke discovery. So for now, we're stuck with just really good descriptions like Nick just gave us and try not to think too much about what it all means at a deeper level. Unless you're a particle physicist and that's your job, of course!
altrag I think it’s the measure of work, an invisible abstract force
@@altrag Its impossible to find out what substance particles and even energy (if it is a substance) is because simply we can't see it, even if we see it someday we may not be able to explain what we saw and if you belive in God pray to give you some light to your difficult for science question...
+Argie88 "Seeing" is a relatively loose term when it comes to physics. We can't see protons, electrons, quarks, etc. Even things as large as viruses and bacteria can't be seen with the naked eye. You could argue that a simple lens still falls in the realm of "seeing" since its just focusing the same wavelengths of light our eyes pick up normally, you still lose that by the time you hit electron microscopes and other such things. We're only seeing machine-generated visualizations of the things those devices are observing.
On the other end of the scale, most astrophysics is "observed" in radio wavelengths, xray, infrared, etc -- wavelengths that again we can't "see" without help from technology.
And even on the human scale, things like CAT, MRI, Xray machines, etc let us "see" things that would otherwise be impossible. In that case, not because we couldn't necessarily look directly but because doing so has some pretty negative consequences (ie: having to cut the person up!)
Anyway, point is that just because we don't know how to "see" it with our current technology and understanding of physics, doesn't mean we will never be able to. String theory for example, if it pans out, may give us a lot more insight into these things. But even if its true, our currently-largest detector (the LHC) is still many orders of magnitude too weak to even think about "seeing" strings or testing string theory predictions. Sadly I don't expect us to reach the necessary energy levels within my lifetime, but you never know -- maybe some clever person will come up with a completely new style of detector that scales better than just trying to smash things together harder and harder.
@@altrag Well technically even if you explained those things, you'd then be like "Explain those things" I think at some point if you don't want an infinite regress you have to just say "IT JUST IS!"
It has been a long time since I heard "Working in a coal mine" sung. It was on the charts in 1966 when I was a freshman in high school. When I took physics in high school I had to use a slide rule because there were no pocket calculators yet. It is lot easier these days with all the tech help. If you were going to make this video back then you would be using film to do it. But then you wouldn't have an Internet to upload it to either. Things have changed a lot since that song was on the air. Thanks for the memory trigger. Us old folks do a lot of that living in the past stuff. :-)
Seriously, you put a lot of energy into your videos and you do a good job. Keep up the good work! (W = F x D).
"Working in the Coalmine" was also a minor hit for Devo in the 80's, due to the soundtrack of the movie Heavy Metal.
“Energy is not a tangible thing, it’s just a number we measure/calculate that describes a property of tangible things” - BOOM!
Nicely said, it’s calculated by two variables intensive by the extensive eg pressure times volume is expansion energy. Voltage times charge is electrical energy. There is no such thing as energy outside our mind it’s a construction of the cleverest kind a sort of mathematical sleight of hand.
In fact you can take a quality multiply that by a quantity and u will get a form of energy
Alas, in physics you have to do the math too but showing us the concepts is what Nick does well. The media uses Force, Energy, Power, Work and more as colloquial terms but each has a specific and different meaning in physics.
This video has seemingly cleared all my doubts regarding the concept of energy. All the content in textbooks never really defined work or energy properly. But this video has probably cleared all those confusions regarding the topic. Much appreciation to all the force x displacement you have put into this video. Loads of Gratitude.
1:24 you vocalize the sound of a basketball hitting the ground? LOL.. I ain't even mad...
I cant stop watching, this UA-cam channel succeeds at having an addicting flow while maintaining a high degree of technical, foundational information. I look forward to my brain post binge.
I had some questions before but your videos are really helping.
Keep making these videos as you are helping a lot of students who are not having teachers as good as you.👍👍👍👍
Not only do I understand Energy, I also understand Work! Twofer!!
Does that mean youll get a job
@@SevenPr1me At least he can now get busy doing work.....XD
A working class hero is something to be!
why does your account show tick-mark ?
@@adityashankar5267 cause imma famous?
@@elperroreggae hmm...👍
Thumbs up for John Lennon reference!
What is energy? Something that the Science Asylum has a lot of.
I think it is the origin of energy.
Hi Gorz!
Ayyy
Do you have YGOpro?
I think I have it, but I don't remember the last time I played on it 😂
So, is "energy" just a human attempt to categorize something while "the universe" laughs at us?
Pretty much. I'd say it's a human attempt to understand the universe's behavior... but, yes, the universe keeps laughing at us.
Yea.
Why would "the universe" laugh at us?
The Science Asylum nick, If energy is based on position what happens when you apply relativity?
priyank tamilsekaran it makes you go crazy.
Just SUPERB ! What clarity of understanding and presentation !
Nick has terrific Energy and does such great Work for all of us !!!
Thank you Nick and thanks to your clone.
But for him this video would not have been the complete gem that it now is !
This video must be one of the opening video in all classes of Physics and Engineering.
Nick you really deserve an honorary professorship at an elite University.
BTW, is your last name really Lucid ? Or is it a "nick" that someone bestowed on you to describe the quality of your educational videos ?!
This is a great video! Your approach to this topic wraps up so much! Thanks so much for posting!
I used one of your videos from 2015 to help explain to others what E=mc^2 means. I then ended up watching a not so small portion of your videos from the intervening years till now. I think I have gathered more understanding, and along the way I might have incidentally memorized your profile.
Thanks for keeping up with the explanations and production.
Never seen energy being explained so clearly! kudos!
1:40 one of the most revelatory things I have ever seen in a video,
this channel never ceases to amaze me!
This was genuinely useful for me and answered many questions. Really appreciate the effort you put in to these, I wish more people would open their minds to content like this.
Related to the point about energy either being kinetic or potential energy, I think the slide at 5:15 that shows various formulas for different types of energy really ties that point together. Just glancing at the formulas you can quickly see that they fall into expressions similar to “mass times expression related to position” (potential) or “mass times something related to velocity squared” (kinetic). Notice how none of those formulas use the square of the mass, for example, energy always scales linearly with the (rest) mass. It shows how everything boils down to individual particles moving or being in a position where a force will move them. Or in the case of a massless particle like a photon the ability of the particle to move something else.
That's a great observation, Doug. Thank you.
Now this puts a twist to my question about "what are 'things' in fundamental physics: quantum fields and space time?", which I posited above. In all those formulas it seems to be "something with mass", but mass we know is nothing but "concentrated energy" (mostly the gluon field, also the Higgs field to a minor extent), so it would seem like I'm reaching a point of circular logic here. Is thus energy the potential to move or modify other energy?
Luis Aldamiz Energy is a property of things and not every thing has mass. A photon for example is massless but has energy equal to its frequency times a constant. The mass of something (by which I mean the rest mass) is, as you said, actually a placeholder for what might be considered energy that is potentially available but not going to be used in a given interaction the equations are evaluating. But hypothetically if an interaction converted all of something with rest mass entirely into photons then the resulting set of photons would collectively have the same amount of energy as the original object plus the energy of its rest mass E=mc^2. It’s just that in most situations the rest mass isn’t changing so is constant on both sides of energy conversion equations.
What I’m getting at is a photon isn’t just energy, energy is a property that a photon has just like it has a frequency and a wavelength. The photon is a thing and when we talk about what that thing is capable of doing in the world we can calculate those effects using the values of its properties. Energy is the property that tells you how much effect a thing might be able to have on other things but isn’t by itself a thing.
But in QFT, a photon is not "a thing" but a wavefunction, a vibration in a field (the photon field specifically) that pervades all space. All particles are just waves, the most honest quantum physicists acknowledge that openly nowadays and waves are not "things" but vibrational energy of something else, the corresponding quantum field or more generally space (as all quantum fields exist in all space, even if they are at rest).
Same for gluons, or more specifically the gluon field, which is incidentally the main culprit of mass and thus of "thingness" as we usually consider it, with the difference that photons are practically everywhere (even in darkness there's heat and radiation) while gluons are only in very specific locations at any given instant (outside atomic nuclei there are no gluons but there is still gluon field at value zero, else gluons, and nuclei and atoms, would not be able to move: where to if there were no gluon field to be charged with their vibrational energy?)
So that's my conundrum: particles seem to be nothing but vibrational energy, so what is "something" then: quantum fields? Is ultimately all work reduced to moving energy through those fields (and thus through space) and acting on other such vibrational energies (particles)? It'd seem so.
Luis Aldamiz In short, yes, perturbations of quantum fields are things. Energy is not a thing, it’s numerical property of those disruptions in the fields, essentially a numerical accounting device.
Numbers alone do nothing: thus energy is something more than just "a numerical property" because it makes work. Energy seems to be a some-THING operating in the other some-THING which is space-time (or space and time as separated parameters when convenient). As far as I can tell those are the fabric of the Universe and we are all made of them.
"If you can change that energy from one type to another, or move it from one object to another, you're doing work." @5:19
This is the definition that I think exists at the crux of what work is, but the more abstract definition presented at the beginning of this video covers even this.
Thanks! Food for thought!
Yeah, so this was the best explanation of energy that I've seen and believe me when I say that I've watched a LOT of videos on this topic.
Yeah.. I know what that LOT means and the frustration when you don't get the right thing and they just repeat the same thing and some confuse you
i appreciate the subtle mouth-made sound effects at 1:24 :)
Watched both this and the old video and found them both enjoyable and helpful. New sub!
Glad you liked them!
This is such a clean definition! I hear so many quantum spirituality nuts talking about energy but none of them can explain what it is... so thanks a lot for this.
It couldn't be explained any simpler. Thanks nick :)
I'm rebuilding my fundumentals. They're vary important if I'm going to study more advanced physics in the future. Like analytical mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, etc
You’re a great teacher, thank you for making these videos for us. It is almost unbelievable how people can live their whole lives without even trying to understand what IS the world surrounding them. I’m watching this video because I have many questions that need answers.
Thanks! Hopefully my videos can answer at least some of your questions.
I have the answers, Tommy. In order to truly know anything at all, you must first find "the Philosopher's Stone," which is the fact that "GOD" is the Mind that is ALL. You will then know precisely what ENERGY is - and what MATTER is, since matter is but a form of energy. All is THOUGHT in the Mind that is God! Any other questions? (I don't receive UA-cam comments, but seekers can easily find me.)
@Tom Rhodes Sir, a simple question.
Do you do Yoga? 🙏
This is the 2nd vid I've seen from your channel, 2 minutes in and I love it subscribed!
Hi Nick ! I just wanna share something personal with you. Back in 2012, during my high school years, I had a Physics teacher who taught us Newtonian Mechanics and Electricity & Magnetism. He changed my life completely, by not just making me fall in love with him as a teacher but more importantly with the beautiful subject 'Physics'. The way he explained everything, giving us proper definitions and examples to illustrate various concepts/laws, along with mathematical proofs for the most general cases, employing vectors and calculus (both differential and integral) to do so, completely mesmerized me. All the topics were covered by him in a very systematic, step-by-step fashion, from the fundamentals to the most difficult of concepts, leaving no room for confusion and making problem solving fun and easy. He remains the best Physics teacher I have seen in my life, better than Walter Lewin or Neil deGrasse Tyson or just about anyone I have come across in the last 7 years. I have often felt very sad about the shortage of such extraordinary teachers in the world, which is perhaps the biggest reason why students never realize the beauty of Physics.
Just a week or two ago, I discovered this channel 'The Science Asylum'. Having watched this video on Energy (and a few more on your channel), I am convinced that your way of teaching very much resembles that of my Physics teacher back in the day. You are truly a legend, just like him. The way you cover the fundamentals, especially the definitions, with proper animations and examples, is exactly what is needed to make students fall in love with Physics. In this world where students are drifting away from science, you are a ray of hope ! I admire and respect you from the bottom of my heart. I will recommend your videos to as many people as I can in my life. Keep up your brilliant work of educating the public ! Love from India !!!
I'm so glad to hear you had a physics teacher like that and I'm honored by the comparison. Teachers are so important.
brilliant explaination
I love how you answer some of the most fundamental questions that most professors can't give a coherent answer to.
Fan from India 🇮🇳 .
Yeah
Definitely
So am i
Hmm
Mee too
Amazing how you toss extremely complex matter (for knowledgeable folks!) and make simple an explanation (for non knowlegeable folks). Good job!!!
You explain things so clearly! It's a great channel
Better definition than in my physics class
This video about how relative the concept of energy is, helped me understand entropy better.
And why the "heat death" of the universe is a consequence of all of the "work" already being done.
Thanks Nick!
Ha, that was again super! Totally precise and still good understandable, even for someone a little crazy! Ha, these explainings are worth their weight or potential energy in gold!! (thus thanx for sharing all the most interesting and usefull stuff with us for free!)
First video I see of your channel, immediately subscribed. A difficult concept, brilliantly explained in easy terms, well done 👏🏻
Every single video from this channel helps me a lot thank you
This guy is so fun to watch, even if I get lost sometimes. But he finally made me laugh out loud (by myself) with that little go to work dance. 😄 Caught me off guard.
So what’s Dark energy
Things that could probably happen in dark
Really it is energy that does things that cannot be understood by scientist
Sex happens when lights are off, does it mean sex it's dark energy?
Dammit! Sex is causing the universe to expand.
Dark energy is just more stuff we don’t know about because of our physical limitations we know it’s there but we don’t know what it is
Dark energy is stuff that happen and we cannot know why, but we know it's there because things are happening, work is being done.
Crossing the street with your eyes closed
It took me little energy to understand this video because it’s very well done! 👍🏻😎👍🏻
Superbly presented and very clear. Great job again. Thanks.
'In the end, all that really matters is what does happen and that takes work!!' That was deeply philosophical!!! Great video as always.
Big Fan From Brazil 🇧🇷
Same
Same here
+1
Wilson from Brazil. This teacher is fantástic.
Esse cara é demais mesmo!! 💪👊👊 BR BR!!
I absolutely love the clones
Always great!!!! Many Thanks!!!!
What a great video!!
I´m going to show it to my students as an introduction to energy!
Really great! Well done!
Your presentations are truly enlightening.
3rd generation toyota camry. First and last year made 92-96. Great choice in transportation prefrence it will run forever. I use to have one the same color😁
Oh yeah, this one is a 95. I can't even believe it's still running.
I had a 96 Camry that I sold 7 years ago, and I still regret it. Really liked that car. If you treat them right, they will run and run and run...
7:08 "What matters, is energy..." divided by the speed of light square for an object that possesses a rest mass. :D
So Dark energy is the energy from Dark side?
1:01 Nick Singing Gotta go work song. BTW cool video.
The Dark energy is the energy of the existence of space itself, I guess? And the space is just one of energy form?
Dark energy is just stuff that we don’t know of we don’t know what it is but we know it’s there because of its effects on the universe
Really love your work here on UA-cam. Thanks for all your effort.
this guy's energy is what makes this channel so great. also, "hey crazies", that's my kind of vibe.
So, Energy is a lot more abstract than I thought. It takes energy for my brain to work around it.
Sou do Brasil. Gostei muito do seu canal, até me inscrevi e estou assistindo vários vídeos. Obrigado pelas legendas em português, me ajuda muito pois não compreendo muito o inglês. Forte abraço!!
The guy who translates to Portuguese is really good! We talk sometimes when he's not sure what words to use. I've learned a lot about Portuguese from those conversations.
So, (relativistic) mass is potential work you could do if you annihilate the thing (e.g. by collision with anti-matter)?
Yep... and rest mass is just a part of that.
The Science Asylum so, since mass is just a property of energy (m=e/c^2), and energy curves space, is that curvature relative to the observer, or is it universal? If universal, does that mean energy is "real", not just a property?
Its relative (hence "general relativity.") But the relationships in GR are far, far more complicated than the "simple" Lorentz transformation from special relativity. I suspect it would be very difficult (maybe impossible) to formulate GR in such a way as to "flatten" spacetime in a particular frame of reference. More likely, everyone would see a curved spacetime, but not necessarily curved in exactly the same way as everyone else sees it.
@@altrag So, gravity is relative? Is the mass and gravity of, say, the Earth affected by relative velocity? Would someone in a train (trains seem to be the 'standard' relativity thought experiment vehicle) see the earth as having a different mass than someone at the station, and therefore weigh less?
Your sense of humor is so good❤️
I am a high school physics teacher and I just found your channel today. Definatly going to show the students a few of your videos.
Thanks for sharing them!
Careful, If you put energy all in one place it can form a kugelblitz!
I believe I may have clicked on this video at a decent percentage of light speed.
Finger kinda hurts.
NorthernLightsOG you must have put a lot of work to do that meaning you have lots of chemical energy
So THAT'S what energy is!?!?!?!?!?
This is the single best explanation I have ever seen.
I laughed WAY too hard at 0:59 work clones head bobbing head song.
Gonna be head bobbing and humming that chant all day long.
question clone really saved this video. you should clone him a girlfriend sometime.
I demand a video on the Interpretations of Quantum theory....PLEEAASEE......:)
Ummmm....
I second this! Make it happen Mr. Lucid!
So energy is just potential to do work?
Yep.
Phew. I'm often overwhelmed by these videos and am not sure if I get anything out of them. If I ever develop proper long range nukes, it will be thanks to you.
nO YoU!
@@jong-unkim6277
👍👍😀😀
Excellent video! You made the topic easy to understand and easy to remember. You have a unique explaining style.
Thanks! Glad you liked it 🤓
Nick you're very proficient at the side head bops! Im impressed. "Gotta go to work work work work"
Doing.... Other things...
Nick what you are doing is inhuman!!
When will you realize that self-cloning is a punishable ethical and moral offence. The cops are coming Nick!!
But the cops are his clones.
We're all his clones now.
One of us. One of us. ONE OF US! ONE OF US!
You're being sarcastic, right? You know he's not ACTUALLY cloning himself?
...yeah...
+Mikayla Eckel Cifrese You're being sarcastic, right? You know I don't ACTUALLY mean it?
He's in his space station, how are the cops gonna get there?
Wouldn't you have technically done work when you were pushing on the car? Energy was used to move your muscles and probably to do other things like raise your heart rate. If we're going to define work as something happening then something was happening when you pushed the car, even though your goal to move the car wasn't changed at all. I know it's nitpicking but I can't help myself.
you would do work IN YOUR BODY, as you said. On the car, no
No no, this is a great question! Just like energy, work has to be "attached" to an object. With the car, no work was done on the car because it didn't move. But, you're right, lots of work was done on my body because chemicals moved around and reacted inside it.
I think he meant work on the car. Your body is doing work on itself but none of it is being done on the car if it is not moving.
Thanks for asking this question. I was always confused in class by the concept of pushing a wall as hard as you can for an hour, losing a lot of energy from your body, yet having done no work.
When pushing on a stationary object no work is done on the object. Also your muscles aren't moving so they don't do any work. Yet your body is using (converting) energy.... but why?
I appreciate the music references! Thank you! 😃
Oh brilliant Nick Lucid, i'd LOVE to see a video on charges. I know what makes charges, but I always wondered what exactly a charge is.
😂doing other things 🤣
1:18 axiom's are introduced that depending on your philosophy on numbers would change the meaning of this video drastically I think.
This is a very well-crafted and explained video that basically goes in one big circle and to sum it all up just basically says all physical Concepts are explanations of observations. It is a true statement but this definition of energy is unsatisfying to me
I think the real question is why is there a potential for something to be done rather than not.
Excellent video that left me wanting more.
Bro I actually love you, every time I have a question you're there to explain it. You are my mother in physics now, thank you.
Very nice video! Thanks for the work!
I anyway feel that the energy definition we can get through Emily Noether's theorem is my favorite: "energy is the conserved quantity associated to time translation symmetry invariance".
It's slightly more abstract, but very beautiful.
Great video. Really helps me understand the concept. Could you do a video in the future about the pauli exclusion principle? I had some trouble wrapping my head around it.
You did a great job of describing many of the different types of potential and kinetic energies, and how they relate to Work. I gotta tell ya though, my instincts are screaming at me, telling me that there is a much simpler underlying principal or meaning; a simpler way of understanding energy such that all of these energies are just manifestations or perspectives of that quintessence.
Or it could just be that spicy taco I just ate.
Dude...love your Videos....you make science fun....thank u a million times over!
THIS IS THE BEST EXPLANATION OF ENERGY I'VE EVER SEEN!! YOU ARE THE BEST
Excellent explanations. Wow. I enjoy re-seeing your videos 😊
2:39 you can't fake talent, you either have it or you don't and this dude HAS IT
It takes commitment ;-)
Once again, you amazed me!! The way you described energy was really amazing, It gave me more clarity.... Thank you man.
I have studies science for years and was not bother to think what energy is. Now, I know energy is just a state, not something tangible.
Great! I will be watching more of your videos now.
Very appreciated and honest effort. I used to think that energy is something material. Now I am beginning to doubt that it might be an immaterial thing.
Love the different work songs you're singing too funny.
😆
7:20 that's a great definition!
I literally love this channel
Loving your vids! Just found you today and on vid 5 lol
This video was super helpful, the way you explained it was big brain.
Wow...I've been Energized. I now know this because my synapses have been Forced to Move by this fantastic video! Thank You.