Talk:Thermal energy

message: I'm not saying I'm an expert, and I'm not here trying to squash free thought or expression, but my substantial background in thermodynamics provides me some perspective in the supposed field of this article. My perspective is that while I have seen one US High school text present a concept of "thermal energy" when teaching elementary concepts of kinetic theory of ideal gases, and I offer no opinion as to the doubtful pedagogical merits of such use, and I may possibly have used this term inappropriately at a cocktail party once, and if so I'm truly sorry, yet beyond that I am not aware of scientific authority which articulates or advocates the generalizations and definitions offered in this article.  Thermodynamics is generally regarded by Physicists and Chemists as  falling into the philosophical realm of a "science" which concerns itself with HEAT, with WORK, with TEMPERATURE and ENTROPY, with PRESSURE and VOLUME, it conventionally defines ENTHALPY (H), GIBBS FREE ENERGY (G), HELMHOLTZ ENERGY (F),  and INTERNAL ENERGY (E) but nowhere do I find anywhere, including the Britannica article cited, an authoritative exposition or definition of "THERMAL ENERGY". The author may have (incorrectly) confabulated with INTERNAL ENERGY which, for an ideal gas has the properties s/he states, but for no real substance. I am aware of several prior editing wars related to this "thermal energy" concept in other articles, and have seen it persistently inserted into fundamental definitions in the Wikipedia. I've made no modifications here and I'm NOT starting an editing war here, but my technical opinion is this article should provide other authoritative references (which I doubt can be found), or should be greatly revised and reviewed by a technical expert having a PhD in the field or by a PhD teaching upper division thermodynamics in Physics, Chemistry, or Engineering.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.191.132.120 (talk) 00:55, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is 'Thermal Energy' Pseudo-Science? 

message: So the difference between kinetic energy on a atomic/subatomic/elementary/quantum level and thermal energy is.....?
:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kinetic_energy#Heat_is_not_kinetic_energy This expert-looking person says that thermal energy is a combination of potential and kinetic energy.--Myncknm 00:23, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Question

message: Hmm, the page seems to have been blanked and restarted. Good? I think it was. There was a lot of irrelevancy and badness in there before. --myncknm 01:41, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Restart of page

message: I have looked at many topics about thermal energy and have found no definition. It is energy caused by heat —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Axiomwheeler (talk • contribs) 04:07, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thermal Energy Definition 

message: I completely rewrote and condensed this (also removed the picture that had little to do with 'thermal energy'); the old version was poorly written and quite redundant. If anyone wants to expand it, they should start from my text. The way, the truth, and the light 07:50, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rewrite 

message: The first line of this page begins, 'Thermal energy or thermodynamic energy, often called heat...'. Shouldn't 'thermal energy' and 'heat' have the same page, then? I am not a physicist, but based on my understanding I don't see the need for separate articles on these subjects. Since heat is a far higher quality article than this one, I suggest merging 'thermal energy' into that page. Terraxos 05:51, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If I remember right, they are not the same; the intro is referring to the common misconception that they are.  Thermal energy is the energy possessed by something with a certain temperature, while heat is somehow related to the transfer of thermal energy from one object to another.  Nyttend 05:56, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

text: So we should merge this with Internal energy instead? I hadn't seen that article before but it looks like a good idea. We can't just delete this article - besides the useful title it has the history section which isn't found elsewhere. I'll add more tags. The way, the truth, and the light 23:18, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Good point Riick.  I have not seen it explained that way before, but your explanation makes sense.  Could you write a paragraph for Internal energy, perhaps titled Thermal energy explaining the things you have explained above? Dolphin (t) 22:55, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I recommend taking the discussion to  to keep it all in one place. That is likely to be more visible than here. David Hollman (Talk) 15:53, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merger 

message: I don't know who messed (or mixed up) the heat, thermal energy, heat transfer, pages (e.g. put the history of heat into the thermal energy page, etc.) but I will quickly clean up the mess.  Each term has a distinct meaning, internal energy was essentially defined by Rudolf Clausius in the 1850s (although he built on some shoulders). --Sadi Carnot 04:15, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Disscussion moved to Talk:Heat
why they call thermal energy for energy of heat an  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.30.143.169 (talk) 14:42, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleaned this article and [[heat]] article

message: This is a crapppppppppy web come onnnn
wat info u give????????
NOTHING NOTHING and more NOTHING
U cant even tell me wat heat energy is!!!!!!!!!!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.242.191.163 (talk) 19:42, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  crappppy webbbb 

message: Although this has been discussed before without coming to a clear conclusion, I propose merging this page with Internal energy.  Specifically, all that needs to be said about this topic is already said in Internal energy#Composition, where, compared to this article, it's said much more clearly and without the added nonsense.  Djr32 (talk) 19:40, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  My understanding is that thermal energy and internal energy are synonymous, so Wikipedia should have only one article, and the alternative term should re-direct to the one article. Dolphin51 (talk) 22:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Djr32 (talk) 19:44, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see  for more recent discussion of this issue. David Hollman (Talk) 15:53, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

text: (The discussion is on a proposal to undo the merge.) Riick (talk) 16:01, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 2 

message: I have removed the text :-
In engineering and technology, and particularly in fields that deal with civil energy use and conservation in building construction, heating systems, and power generation, heat and thermal energy are often indiscriminately used interchangeably.
from the section: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thermal_energy&oldid=523879256#Distinction_of_thermal_energy_and_heat
Which is preposterous twaddle. I am sure there is no reliable source for this assertion. --Damorbel (talk) 13:42, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Latest change 

message: Where does this come from? :-
According to the zeroth law of thermodynamics, heat is exchanged between thermodynamic systems in thermal contact only if their temperatures are different,
Surely the second law! (And it should be energy that is exchanged.) --Damorbel (talk) 14:07, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  More nonsense 

message: Can't the thermal energy of a system be defined as as state function something like the following?
:The thermal energy of a system is equal to the maximum amount of energy that could, in principle, be extracted from the system solely by heat processes (i.e. without any work, matter transfer, etc., in or out of the system)".
Of course, by "in principle", I mean I'm allowing for the hypothetical process mentioned in the definition to take place (arbitrarily close to) remaining at equilibrium and to take the temperature of the system (arbitrarily close) to absolute zero, where the thermal energy becomes zero.  Doesn't this definition constitute a state function, i.e. its value doeesn't depend on how the system got into that state, correct?  It is an operational definition in that you can measure this quantity of energy to some precision by cooling the system in a certain way.  If this definition isn't consistent with the concept of thermal energy, when and why do they differ? 
DavRosen (talk) 05:54, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  state function that seems similar to "thermal energy" 

message: It might be helpful to recognize that there are of course numerous interconversions between forms of energy and that only TOTAL energy of the UNIVERSE is conserved.  An "isolated" system is a reasonable facsimile.  Given this it might be worth questioning the tendency to single out thermal energy as particularly ill-defined because of the fact of energy interconversion.  The same can be said of all forms of energy except for total energy of the universe or isolated system.  Thermal energy is simply an especially good example of a form of energy with many interconversions both input and output. Davidr222 (talk) 16:15, 12 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Perhaps a better approach? 

message: I removed some language from the lede.  This whole article is problematic - "thermal energy" is not a standard term in physics, and for good reason (it cannot be defined in general).  But to the extent it makes sense, it is certainly not the "average kinetic energy per particle" - one could better define it by subtracting the average velocity first, but for that we need a reliable source, and I doubt there is one (hyperphysics certainly doesn't count as such).  Anyway, I tried to make the lede less wrong.  Waleswatcher (talk) 17:01, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  lede 

message: A bulk property? I can put heat into an ice cube and melt some of it. The temperature doesn't change and the mean kinetic energy of the particles doesn't change either (since that's what temperature IS). But I have increased its internal energy, have I not? That heat energy went SOMEWHERE, did it not? The internal energy must have increased. So have I increased its "thermal energy"? You see the definitional problem here. You can't connect internal energy directly with either temperature or kinetic energy. Some of internal energy is potential energy. But it gets put in, and taken out, as heat. Is that part "thermal energy" or not?  The hyperphysics definition completely finesses that problem by going for a system of free particles. SBHarris 06:11, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the problem with having a Wikipedia page on "thermal energy", a term that can mean different things to different people in different contexts. The Ency. Brit. definition includes potential energy but the Hyperphysics usage does not.  In your example, the liquid water at 0C has more internal energy than ice at the same temperature. One can get more heat flow from the water than from the ice for a given temperature change.  But there is definitely a common usage of "thermal" that refers only to kinetic energy. In nuclear physics, one speaks about thermal neutrons and fast neutrons. Neutrons do not have potential energy, so the term "thermal" refers to their kinetic energy. If the average kinetic energy of the neutrons is on the order of one electron volt they are considered thermal.AMSask (talk) 06:16, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with your first sentence.  Personally, I think this article is not reliably sourced and should probably be deleted.  Encyclopedias are not reliable sources in wikipedia's view, and hyperphysics even less so.  Waleswatcher (talk) 12:11, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Which is why I started the section "Thermal Energy is not a scientific term". It is, nevertheless, a term that seems to be used in one of three ways: synonymously with U (thermodynamic internal energy, which includes potential energy due to inter-particle forces) OR synonymously with U - PE (ie. the average KE per particle) OR synonymously with <Tr. KE> (average translational KE per particle. If it is used the first way, it serves only to confuse: we should simply refer to it as U: thermodynamic internal energy. If it is used in either the latter two ways, it appears to be simply a substitute for KE or Translational KE.AMSask (talk) 00:33, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Break 

message: Is our technology capable of determining whether or not thermal dynamic energy is a viable source? Sustainability plus stability are the two factors are far more important. BlueFireSnake (talk) 20:10, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Far more important than what? Dolphin (t) 04:30, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update 

message: I have undone this good faith edit.
Heat transfer does not distinguish kinetic from potential energy.Chjoaygame (talk) 16:12, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reason for undo of good faith edit 

message: This https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thermal_energy&type=revision&diff=1104461578&oldid=1102799939 edit posts a topic rather different from the main direction of this article. This article is about a technical term that is used loosely in several topics of physics, to refer several different manifestations of energy. These uses of the word 'thermal' are quite abstract and are rather different from its use in the new edit, which is about large scale industry, a far more concrete topic. I suggest that the new edit should be moved to form a stub of a new industry-oriented article. It is evident that the editor who posted the new edit expects that there will be more comparable industrial projects.Chjoaygame (talk) 07:38, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Industrial thermal energy