‘HEAT’ AND ‘WORK’ IN THE SCHOOL

It is to the schools that we must look for the sources of confusion and misunderstanding regarding the meaning and use of the term ‘heat’. The school teacher is not only burdened with large classes but also labours under difficulties imposed by linguistic tradition. The nouns ‘heat’ and ‘work’ are each appropriate direct objects for the verb ‘to do’. Yet, although ‘work’ is generally correctly described as ‘done’, ‘heat’ is traditionally mis‐described as ‘given’, ‘received’, ‘transferred’, ‘exchanged’ or ‘released’. This is due to the fact that although ‘work’ was an interaction from the outset, ‘heat’ was long mistaken for a property, ‘caloric’.