The nature of energy is transformation

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The nature of energy is transformation

Postby Dvivid » Fri May 04, 2012 1:35 pm

I keep thinking of this phrase every day lately, especially when Im teaching qigong...The nature of energy is transformation.

Energy transforms constantly. It can be light, heat, electromagnetic fields, bioelectricity...

Western medical science is increasingly interested in understanding human energy. This recent article is about a study which showed ferroelectricity in mammal tissue. The study was on pigs, but of course it is reasonable to assume the bioelectric properties of many animals on Earth is similar, including humans.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2012030 ... rgy-inside

Why on earth should any animal tissue be ferroelectric? Well, as I mentioned, the living world does make use of some unexpected material properties. Bone, for example, is piezoelectric, which as it happens is another useful kind of behavior we rely on for everyday technologies. It is exploited, for instance, in pressure and vibration sensors like those in your computer keyboard, because piezoelectric materials produce an electrical charge when pressure is applied to it. It seems that bony creatures use this principle too: the electrical response to squeezing of bone helps tissues gauge the forces they experience. In seashells, meanwhile, piezoelectricity helps prevent cracks and fractures by dissipating the energy of a shock impact as electricity.

OK – but ferroelectricity? Who needs that? Engineers Bin Chen and Huajian Gao have speculated that the property might provide another way for the tissue to register forces, and perhaps monitor blood pressure. Or perhaps the property could sense blood temperature (because ferroelectricity is temperature-sensitive), or, as in seashells, disperse mechanical energy and prevent damage. Or maybe it could even act as a sort of “tissue memory” in conjunction with nerves.


Like Richard Feynman said, "There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing all natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law—it is exact so far as we know. The law is called the conservation of energy. It states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy, that does not change in manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same.
—The Feynman Lectures on Physics"
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Re: The nature of energy is transformation

Postby Brian » Fri May 04, 2012 2:47 pm

This is absolutely right...it is the Law of Conservation of Energy: The law of conservation of energy is that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be transferred or transformed from one form to another (including transformation into or from mass, as matter). The total amount of energy in a closed system never changes.

Energy in a system may be transformed so that it resides in a different state. Energy in many states may be used to do many varieties of physical work. Energy may be used in natural processes or machines, or else to provide some service to society. The generic name for a device which converts energy from one form to another is a transducer. Energy transformations in the universe over time are generally characterized by the various kinds of energy available since the Big Bang, including gravitational energy and electromagnetic waves.
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Re: The nature of energy is transformation

Postby Brian » Fri May 04, 2012 4:19 pm

A Closed System exchanges energy (heat and work) but not matter with the environment. A greenhouse is an example of a closed system exchanging heat but not work with its environment. Another example is the heat engine . It is a device that converts heat energy into mechanical energy or more exactly a system which operates with only heat and work passing across its boundaries. As work is done on the gas inside the chamber, the temperature and pressure increase and some heat will be transferred out of the system. When heat is transferred to the system, the gas expands, it does work on the surroundings and the temperature and pressure decrease.

Nothing living can exist as a closed system as there is a continuous exchange of matter with the surroundings in order to survive. Energy is received from the environment, is used and is transformed as needed, then is lost to the environment and is changed again. This is compliant with the Law of Conservation of Energy even though the system is open. The Law applies to living and non-living systems.
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Re: The nature of energy is transformation

Postby wpgtaiji » Sat May 05, 2012 8:39 am

pete5770 wrote: If I push my car into a gas station I am obviously transferring my energy into the car in order to make it move? I tkink? Key words being I think. If I'm correct then what happens or happened to that energy? I would seem to be gone(destroyed). Again, key words being "I think".

I guess, where you live, cars dont have exhaust.
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Re: The nature of energy is transformation

Postby joeblast » Sat May 05, 2012 9:09 am

oh "its still there to use," just maybe not by you! we're not a closed system with respect to our environment, after all.
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Re: The nature of energy is transformation

Postby wpgtaiji » Sat May 05, 2012 11:20 am

pete5770 wrote: So you're saying that the energy I expended may have become? or did become? part of a closed system to which I have no access??? Which would be in line with the idea that it can't be destroyed. The closed system being the car itself?


dude, the car is NOT a closed system! Exhaust is a release of energy that the car could NOT use. If it was a closed system, it would use ALL the energy.

mate, you really have to crack a basic science book, or stop using "proof" as a word to not believe in things like qi. That you have no understanding of basic science, yet you still want proof of things blows my mind.
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Re: The nature of energy is transformation

Postby John the Monkey mind » Sat May 05, 2012 1:15 pm

pete5770 wrote:
wpgtaiji wrote:
pete5770 wrote: So you're saying that the energy I expended may have become? or did become? part of a closed system to which I have no access??? Which would be in line with the idea that it can't be destroyed. The closed system being the car itself?


dude, the car is NOT a closed system! Exhaust is a release of energy that the car could NOT use. If it was a closed system, it would use ALL the energy.

mate, you really have to crack a basic science book, or stop using "proof" as a word to not believe in things like qi. That you have no understanding of basic science, yet you still want proof of things blows my mind.


In thinking about it, I'm of the opinion that I was wrong in my previous statement in which I felt that by pushing the car I was transferring energy into that car. None of the energy I expended in pushing the car can ever be used, by the car itself, again, to move forward or backward??? So I have to assume that all that energy I used was simply expelled, by me, in the form of air and water(sweat), to be used again by some other source???? Or am I missing something? Help me out with this!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy

The universe is the closed system.
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Re: The nature of energy is transformation

Postby pete5770 » Sat May 05, 2012 3:19 pm

FWIW a quote on energy.

Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by
spending oneself that we become rich.

Sarah Bernhardt
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Re: The nature of energy is transformation

Postby joeblast » Sun May 06, 2012 9:55 am

To make a couple differentiations, consider the energy you harness to push that car, mostly scalar quantities (from food digested etc) which we manifest into vector quantities that have energy-direction that transfer kinetic energy to the moving car, and that moving energy is consumed by the forces of friction. (Which manifests as heat, which then dissipates to its surroundings - the law of entropy is everywhere, and where it seems "lost" is merely the fact of entropy's involvement and that usually we are taking 'ordered energy' and by "using it" we are changing it to "less ordered energy" that is not of a form that is quite so useful to us.)

Same as the ridiculous output of the sun...how much of that can we utilize, simply due to conversion issues?

I think that's the only point you overlooked Pete - the energy transferred to the car isnt potential energy, it is a kinetic form that easily dissipates. Its not as if the car were heated by microwaves and xrays or something that would actually raise the level of excitation of the individual molecules/atoms of the car. When considering energy and energy transformations, energy transformation follows laws just like a great many other operations. Certain formats will translate more easily to certain other formats. And sometimes getting from one format to another requires a few intermediary steps that consume their own energy along the way, therin lies the need for calculations for energetic efficiency.

While the universe may be a closed system, for all intents and purposes, localities may simply be treated as open systems due to the vast natures involved. Its just like with attempting to do something like calculate the temperature of the earth, one cannot treat it as a closed system - for example in the last solar maximum the uppermost layers of the atmosphere expanded thousands of km due to mostly ultraviolet heating from the sun, and in the 09-10 sunspot funk we saw that portion of the atmosphere shrink accordingly. If you treat the atmosphere as a closed system you are virtually guaranteed to have erroneous outcomes ;)

A closed system would be like a pressure cooker, at least until you release the lid. Its actually pretty tough to devise a completely closed system perfectly isolated from all outside forces.

I think Bernhardt left out the prescient point that the energy must be spent wisely, otherwise at some point it becomes indistinguishable from mere "dissipation."
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Re: The nature of energy is transformation

Postby pete5770 » Sun May 06, 2012 10:08 am

joeblast wrote:To make a couple differentiations, consider the energy you harness to push that car, mostly scalar quantities (from food digested etc) which we manifest into vector quantities that have energy-direction that transfer kinetic energy to the moving car, and that moving energy is consumed by the forces of friction. (Which manifests as heat, which then dissipates to its surroundings - the law of entropy is everywhere, and where it seems "lost" is merely the fact of entropy's involvement and that usually we are taking 'ordered energy' and by "using it" we are changing it to "less ordered energy" that is not of a form that is quite so useful to us.)

Same as the ridiculous output of the sun...how much of that can we utilize, simply due to conversion issues?

I think that's the only point you overlooked Pete - the energy transferred to the car isnt potential energy, it is a kinetic form that easily dissipates. Its not as if the car were heated by microwaves and xrays or something that would actually raise the level of excitation of the individual molecules/atoms of the car. When considering energy and energy transformations, energy transformation follows laws just like a great many other operations. Certain formats will translate more easily to certain other formats. And sometimes getting from one format to another requires a few intermediary steps that consume their own energy along the way, therin lies the need for calculations for energetic efficiency.

While the universe may be a closed system, for all intents and purposes, localities may simply be treated as open systems due to the vast natures involved. Its just like with attempting to do something like calculate the temperature of the earth, one cannot treat it as a closed system - for example in the last solar maximum the uppermost layers of the atmosphere expanded thousands of km due to mostly ultraviolet heating from the sun, and in the 09-10 sunspot funk we saw that portion of the atmosphere shrink accordingly. If you treat the atmosphere as a closed system you are virtually guaranteed to have erroneous outcomes ;)

A closed system would be like a pressure cooker, at least until you release the lid. Its actually pretty tough to devise a completely closed system perfectly isolated from all outside forces.

I think Bernhardt left out the prescient point that the energy must be spent wisely, otherwise at some point it becomes indistinguishable from mere "dissipation."


Makes sense to me. Interesting little side trip in physics - thanx
I'm thinking that Ms. Bernhardt was refering to "energy(enthusiasm)" created by one person affecting others near them. If a few people have some of this "energy", i.e. on a baseball team,
then it could sort of "rub off" on the other members of the team and help their efforts.
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Re: The nature of energy is transformation

Postby joeblast » Mon May 07, 2012 6:21 am

Yes indeed, but one doesnt want to yell himself hoarse, winding up a little winded when its his turn at the plate, that can make the difference between grounding out and the game winning RBI single ;)
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Re: The nature of energy is transformation

Postby Dvivid » Wed May 09, 2012 9:05 am

"As above, so below."

I mentioned this concept that Im presently obsessed with as it pertains to qigong practice, and your personal experience of what we call energy, or Qi.

People feel heat, or tingling, especially as beginners, and say "I feel the Qi!" And then they search for that same feeling again in their practice. But the searching for a specific feeling inhibits the experience. Over time, the typical sensations of heat and tingling give way to a more "open" feeling that is more difficult to describe.

Finding your center, being in the moment, and expanding your alert awareness leads to a much richer experience during qigong practice. The many random sensations come and go and you hold your focus in the center.
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Re: The nature of energy is transformation

Postby joeblast » Wed May 09, 2012 11:33 am

good stuff!

"hold the center" = "keep doing that which is producing the phenomena" = "not paying attention to scenery" :mrgreen:
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Re: The nature of energy is transformation

Postby wpgtaiji » Wed May 09, 2012 9:22 pm

Dvivid wrote:People feel heat, or tingling, especially as beginners, and say "I feel the Qi!" And then they search for that same feeling again in their practice. But the searching for a specific feeling inhibits the experience. Over time, the typical sensations of heat and tingling give way to a more "open" feeling that is more difficult to describe.


I am glad you said it! Sometimes its just a high blood sugar!

My personal pet peeve is seeing someone totally out of every sort of alignment one could come up with for "correct" qigong practice, and they say "I feel the qi!!!" Sorry, no. It is your mind pretending.

In some ways, I can understand why pete has such strong negative feelings towards qigong people, but the sad fact is, if they spent just a little time to get things right, their entire practice would actually give them something.

I wish people would just chill about the actual practice sensations. That is so far from what are important indicators of actually getting somewhere in your practice it is sad to even talk about it except when teaching stark beginners. You know you are getting somewhere with things when you get around high "stress" situations and things happen. My wife has told me on MANY occasions when we first got together (which is the way - you cant THINK, i want to help. IT just happens).

If more people focused on the actual results with other people vs the subjective feelings they think they are getting, there would be a lot less confusion and people like pete.

ok.. enough of the sidetrack! back to your regularly scheduled program.
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