Template talk:Energy footer

Delete physics and chem stuff
The idea of listing different places that energy is stored seems silly. Everything in the world is associated with some energy. There's energy in electric fields, energy in light, energy in stress and strain, energy in lightning, energy in food and digestion and exercising, energy in protein folding, energy involved in fluid flow, energy dissipation in friction and drag...to make this list remotely complete it would go on forever. And how many people are reading the wikipedia article on, say, sound, and want to see this template? Are the group of people who read the article sound likely to be unusually interested in offshore wind turbines?? Certainly not! The fact that sound contains energy is just one incidental aspect of sound, not a particularly important one to most readers. Most of the other topics are the same. Anyway, I propose just deleting the section, "Forms of energy".

Then this can be perfected into a much better template about "energy" in the sense of "energy production" and the "energy industry". That's truly a unified and coherent and interrelated topic worthy of a template!

Anyway, does anyone object to deleting the section, "Forms of energy"? --Steve (talk) 16:21, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

UPDATE: No one objected, so I shortened the template to focus it on a specific coherent topic ("energy" as in the energy industry). I'm happy to justify in detail each entry that I deleted. --Steve (talk) 04:58, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

3 proposals
Proposal #1: I agree with what you have done so far with one remark though. I don't think that electric power or fuel are fundamental concepts of energy because they are only examples of an energy system (electricity power) and one very vast energy carrier (fuel), so I would suggest deleting them (and replacing them by two others, see below).

Proposal #2: Generally, there is a confusion about what energy is because it is semantically very rich. In this template if we concentrate on the energy sector and its relation to society, I would therefore suggest adding two fundamental concepts: energetics and laws of thermodynamics (or thermodynamics if you prefer but it is probably too vast), as it is important that anyone dealing with energy issues understands the basic principles of energetics and thermodynamics which are often ignored in the discussions about energy (even by energy experts).

Proposal #3: The proposal I suggest is adding two sections that go along with Primary energy sources. Theses concepts are Energy carriers and energy systems (as it has been done in the article about Primary energy sources). That way the reader will have the overview of the three fundamental concepts (and examples) that correspond to energy and energetics.

I will make each proposal described above to make it easier for us all to see what the final result would be. -- Ledjazz (talk) 13:26, 17 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Update: I did the changes suggested in the template sandbox. You can look at it in the (testcases page) and let me know what you think before we replace the current version of the template. Thanks. -- Ledjazz (talk) 14:59, 17 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Update: since no one objected to the proposals, I integrated them as described above. Ledjazz (talk) 11:32, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Photoelectric effect
Paine Ellsworth has twice added Photoelectric effect to the template as part of "Fundamental Concepts". Explanation is:
 * "the photoelectric effect introduced the discreet "particle" of light, the "quantum" - can't get much more fundamental than that!"

Dear Paine, it's possible that you are an expert physicist behaving in an inscrutable way. But I'm going to guess that you are not a physicist. So here is a very basic explanation of why I disagree with what you wrote:
 * Light is not the same as energy. Yes, light carries energy. So does sound, so do electrons, so does sugar, so do kangaroos. The relation between light and energy is not much closer or much more fundamental than the relation between kangaroos and energy.
 * Photons are the particle of light. Photons are, likewise, not the same as energy. And they are not made of energy.
 * The fact that light is quantized into discrete photons is a fundamental aspect of light, but that does not make it a fundamental aspect of energy. Energy is not quantized in our universe. And by the way, plenty of things are quantized (discrete) besides light. Gravity is quantized into gravitons, matter is quantized into elementary particles, etc. etc.
 * The photoelectric effect is not the same as photons. The photoelectric effect was not the only evidence that photons exist even in 1905, and it most certainly is not today. (These days, there are thousands of ways to prove that photons exist.) If you want to tell someone what a photon is, don't tell them to read the photoelectric effect article, tell them to read the Photon article. (Of course, in this case, neither should be linked.)

Hope that helps explain why I am again reverting your change... :-) --Steve (talk) 05:19, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * This is just to let you know that I have read your message and am reviewing the points you made. Thank you for keeping this a civil discussion.  No, I am not a physicist.  I added the photoelectric effect based upon what I had read in the above discussions, and upon my sincere belief that it fell within the definition of the first section of this template.  I could be wrong.  Let me also make note for the record that this template can be found at the bottom of the PE article, which makes me wonder how many other of the removed links were not checked for the presence of this template.  There is no reason for this template to exist in articles to which it does not link. – Paine ( Climax !)  06:15, 15 December 2012 (UTC)