ten to be annihilated. Two cannon-balls of equal size and velocity meet each other and fall motionless. The immense energy of these moving bodies seems to pass out of existence. But not so; it is changed into heat, and the exact amount of heat may be calculated; moreover, an equal amount of heat may be changed back again into an equal amount of momentum. Here, therefore, force is not lost, but is changed from a visible to an invisible form. Motion is changed from bodily motion into molecular motion. Thus heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, and mechanical force, are transmutable into each other, back and forth; but, amid all these changes, the amount of force remains unchanged. Force is incapable of destruction, except by the same power which created it. The domain of Science lies within the limits of these changes—creation and annihilation lie outside of her domain.
The mutual convertibility of forces into each other is called correlation of forces; the persistence of the same amount, amid all these protean forms, is called conservation of force.[1]
- ↑ In recent works the word energy is used to designate active or working force as distinguished from passive or non-working force. It is in this working condition only that force is conserved, and therefore conservation of energy is the proper expression. Nevertheless, since the distinction between force and energy is imperfectly or not at all defined in the higher forms of force, and especially in the domain of life, I have preferred in this article to use the word force in the general sense usual until recently.
