During my presentation at the EPSRI Congress I shared my own personal "energy pathway" that I developed over the course of the week. I'm not sure what the best title is for this concept (pathway, journey, itinerary, etc.), but I found that creating it really helped me understand why I think about energy the way I do and how I got to this understanding.
Over the course of the week my ideas about energy changed dramatically. In order to make sense of all that was going on in my mind I tried to track my thoughts each day and also the specific experiences that influenced my understanding of energy. This tracking can either be done day-to-day or as a reflection at the very end. I did a bit of a mixture of these two, jotting down thoughts as the week went by and then collecting them all into a full list at the end of the week.
After reflecting for a couple of days on the concept of an energy pathway, I think a distinction needs to be made between the two types of items that belong on the path. The first type of item is any change in my understanding of energy. The second is any experiences that shaped my understanding. I think it would be valuable to list both of these types of items. Of course, these two types of items don't necessarily have to be cause-and-effect. There are many instances where an experience directly changes my understanding of energy, but there are also times when my ideas change without a specific outside influence or when I have a related experience that doesn't necessarily change my understanding.
With these new thoughts on my energy pathway, here is what I have come up with (*specific experiences rather than ideas):
Initial understanding: many forms of energy
Isn't all energy just kinetic and potential?
*Discussion with Rachel who introduces the concept of field energy
Three types of energy: kinetic, potential and field?
Kinetic and potential seem like two sides of the same coin, how can field energy fit?
*Sam’s blog post about energy as a methodology for discussing cause and effect
Energy isn't stuff at all, but just an idea we use to talk about things that happen
*Discussion with Hunter about field energy
If energy can have a certain location (in fields) and certain routes (ex: traveling to lightbulb from battery) then it must be real stuff rather than just an idea
Current thoughts: energy is real stuff that is either active or perched and ready to go (kinetic/potential) and it can exist in fields
New Questions from my pathway:
What is a field?
What is a force?
If humans had evolved differently to have different senses would we be able to sense energy?
Note about formatting: I'm not very familiar with html and blogging so I couldn't make my pathway very fancy. I think it might be interesting either to list ideas and experiences in different columns or different colors. These methods would help differentiate between the two types of items.
re: formatting. Emma, if you make the visual you like in Word or PowerPoint or something, I can show you how to (a) turn it into an image you can then link to in your post or (b) upload it as a Google document that you can make viewable and provide a link to in your post. Maybe you know how to do those already, in which case I think those might be better options than trying to do something with a fancy layout in a blog post.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed getting to work with you last week, and appreciated your Congress presentation.