Talk:Joule

message: The description says "a force of one newton moving an object one meter along the direction of the force".  Shouldn't that be "a force of one newton moving a one-kilogram object one meter along the direction of the force"?  --Musanim 16:43, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No. The newton already takes care of the weight of the object. It could be a 100kg object being pushed on non-ideal rollers, or a 0.1kg object being pushed vertically, as long as the resulting force is 1 newton. LightYear 03:03, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That might be a good explanation, but if it is, it should be in the article, not back here on the talk pages.2600:1700:6759:B000:1C64:8308:33BC:E2D6 (talk) 05:26, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

text:  I'm not getting something here.  What if a force of 1 newton were applied to an object with very little mass; wouldn't it just accelerate more quickly than a more massive object (and traverse 1 meter in much less time)?--Musanim 01:35, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Indeed, one newton applied to a very light object will have that object moving at a terrific (change of) pace by the end of the metre. The kinetic energy (0.5mv^2) gained by the object (1J) during the event will still be the same as that of a slower moving, heavy object (which underwent the same 1N force along a metre). Joule is a measure of energy, not velocity or power (both of which involve time, as you are expecting). There's probably a better forum for this - study some physics sources, and the initiallly counter-intuitive concept will click for you. LightYear 05:21, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

text:  The newton unit already takes into account the mass of the object. F = ma, and 1 newton == 1 kilogram * 1 m/s^2. So a given force, say one newton, can accelerate a large object slowly, or a small object quickly. Foobaz·o< 06:01, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  After thinking about this for a while, I finally got it.  At first, it seemed that a 1 kilogram object being pushed with a 1 newton force for 1.414 seconds to move it a meter had to involve more work than a 1 gram object being pushed with a 1 newton force for 0.0447 seconds to move it a meter.  But then I considered what might apply such a force, and I imagined a second object being acted on by gravity (pulling at right angles to the first object, through a pulley).  Since the second weight falls the same distance in both cases, the same work is done.  QED.  Thanks for your help.--Musanim 01:30, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you're still making an error. A Force doesn't "move" an object. It accelerates it (or decelerates it if the object was already moving before the Force was applied to it). After the application of the Force is gone, the object is still moving, isn't it? (I'm thinking of a ball floating in outer space that has been hit by another ball.) Your aim in applying a Force to a mass isn't to move the mass to another place. It's to change the speed at which the mass is moving to another place (or GIVE it a speed, if the object started out with no speed at all). A Force doesn't change where an object is. It changes how fast it's going. If the object is already moving, then if there's no Force at all, the object still moves.2600:1700:6759:B000:1C64:8308:33BC:E2D6 (talk) 05:26, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

text: I'm not sure that I would consider it misleading so much as illustrative. We give the definition of a calorie as the amount of energy it takes to heat a gram of water by one degree, but the energy can be used in other ways too. 71.193.62.115 (talk) 22:49, 18 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is the description missing something? 

message: Euuu ... isn't the start of this page ENTIRELY wrong ?
Take 1 vacuum, take no fiction, once i get the mass going, it will move indefinite ...
What COULD be correct is that 1 Joule is the force required to accelerate 1KG to 1m per second. THAT makes sense...
If you don't believe me, i recommend looking it up on GOOD scientific source.
Or use the SI definition, clearly states kg * m2 / s2 AKA: acceleration of 1 kg to 1 meter per second. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.196.157.145 (talk) 
::I agree that maybe there is a problem. The Comment above wasn't dated, and if it's old then the article might have been changed since the comment above, but as of the date/time of THIS comment that I'm typing, the article contains the sentence
::::QUOTE
::::It is equal to the amount of work done when a force of 1 newton displaces a mass through a distance of 1 metre in the direction of the force applied.
::::UNQUOTE
::Is there an omission there? Should it say "It is equal to the amount of work done when a force of 1 newton displaces a mass OF ONE KILOGRAM" [emphasis mine] "through a distance of 1 metre in the direction of the force applied."? So, what the article says now is that if the mass being displaced is the Moon then the amount of work done is the same as if the mass being displaced is a golf-ball? Is that correct? If it's NOT correct please fix it. If it IS correct then edit the article to explain why the mass of the object is irrelevant to the idea of what a Joule is.
:::Further down, in the table under the subsection title "Definition", the article defines a Joule as being equal to language that amounts to "a kg multiplied by a square meter divided by a square second", i.e. something that causes a specified mass (in this case, 1 kilogram) to undergo a specified acceleration (in this case, a rate of increase in speed such that during a second the speed would increase by 1 meter per second) over a distance of 1 meter. The "1 kilogram of mass" in this definition seems to me to contradict the sentence about which I have some concerns, as that sentence seems to me to imply that the mass could be ANY MASS, not restricted to a mass of one kilogram.
::::I am no longer sure that the QUOTED sentence above errs in its omission of a kilogram being the mass moved. It might, rather, have something to do with the verb "displaces". A Force dos not displace an object. It imparts an acceleration to it. If the Force continues for awhile and then goes away, the object continues to move, i.e. it continues to be FURTHER displaced from where it started before the Force arrived (I'm imagining a ball floating in outer space) even though the Force is gone. I can imagine that a Force can be applied to an object during the time it takes for the object to respond to the Force by moving one meter (stated in other sources to be "applied over the course of one meter" rather than "displaced through one meter"), and that the Force can be removed after the meter has been traveled, but I am really uncertain that it's correct to speak of a Force as "displacing" an object instead of imparting to the object its own tendency to keep on racking up additional "displacement" after the Force is gone.2600:1700:6759:B000:1C64:8308:33BC:E2D6 (talk) 04:10, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: See discussion titled "#Joule needs specific units for definition." below. Jähmefyysikko (talk) 04:23, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wrong description