Talk:Energy and work

I have a problem with what this teaches. The way I learnt it is this

Work: Applied force x movement in Joule. It's the transferred amount of energy, not stored energy.

      Ex: We lift an object of 10kg to 10m high, 1000J of work is done to do this.

Energy: The ability to do work - Not the flow of work. Rather it should be the other way around: Work is the displacement of energy.

      Ex: To be able to lift the object that high, we need to have at least 1000 J of energy somewhere in our system to be able to do it. If we don't have the energy in the system, we can't do it. If we do, we transfer this energy into the object.

Power: The rate at which work is done and equals the rate at which energy is transferred.

      Ex: You need to use 1000kJ, which you do in 10 seconds, meaning you use an average of 100W to lift the object to 10m high.

(all examples are at 100% efficiency of course)--Gammro (talk) 13:08, 29 January 2015 (CET)

I would say yes, if it would be real physics, but your definition would mean, that belts needs also energy.

I see the problem. Let's think about a way to express that we're talking about game physics.

that includes also the examples, which are not useful for this, cause currently nothing in Factorio has a weight in the sense of this definition.

Ssilk (talk) 12:47, 29 January 2015 (CET)

IMO, we should stick to definitions that are as close to real-life as possible. Not only to have people who are familiar with real-life physics understand what is meant, but also to not teach people game-physics as if they were real. The concepts of these 3 words are pretty well defined and documented(just look at the wikipedia pages), so it shouldn't be very difficult to adapt them for Factorio.

Yes, according to the game, belts do work without requiring energy. That's a choice of the devs to make the (early) game less of a hassle. And my examples were to demonstrate the concepts in real-life examples. I'd need a bit of time to define a few examples for Factorio.

--Gammro (talk) 13:08, 29 January 2015 (CET)

when I reread this: work is just stored energy. If you let drop the object from 10 m height you can regain 1kJ. The energy changes just its state. In Factorio this is change loseless. Ssilk (talk) 08:55, 30 January 2015 (CET)

It is actually precisely the opposite: energy is stored work, or the potential for work (though the second law of thermodynamics, with its implication of non-recoverable entropy, weakens the second definition somewhat). In particular energy is measured in joules, NOT watts, which is the unit of power. I think it does players a disservice to use terms in a way that is totally at odds with real physics - it misses the opportunity to teach. I've totally rewritten the article to correct these egregious errors and give more information. If you think the result is unacceptable, feel free to revert. Thrawcheld (talk) 03:34, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for this amazing overhaul of the page; it is now much more clear, and also right from the perspective of the factorio source code, which defines all energy as joules, and converts watt into joule (Types/Energy). -- Bilka (talk) - Admin 10:56, 6 February 2018 (UTC)