MOST of us have a vague idea of what energy is, if only because we have to pay for it. We know that it is the E in Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc2, and all of us have an opinion about the pros and cons of nuclear energy. For William Blake’s devil in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, energy was “eternal delight”, yet Newton never fully appreciated the importance of a concept that was rarely used until the 19th century.
So, what is energy? Easy to ask the question but, as Jennifer Coopersmith shows in Energy, the Subtle…
