this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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Energy in physics feels analogous to money in economics. Is a manmade medium of exchange used for convenience. It is the exchange medium between measureable physical states/things.

Is energy is real in the same way money is? An incredibly useful accounting trick that is used so frequently it feels fundamental, but really it's just a mathmatical convenience?

Small aside: From this perspective 'conservatipn of energy' is a redundant statement. Of course energy must be conserved or else the equations are wrong. The definition of energy is it's conservation.

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[–] vane 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yes it's manmade concept because people are made from matter so they use energy as a matter representation ignoring everything else that doesn't have matter. Looking at you SI. 1 Joule = 1 J = 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−2 is amount of work done when a force of one newton displaces a body through a distance of one metre in the direction of that force. So you can see you need a weight, a distance and a time. Given that in quantum world distance is infinite, time and weight is 0 it's completly manmade product.