On 4 Jan 2004 17:24:06 -0800, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Gary Coffman says...

Power is merely an observation of that energy flow past a fixed point.

I guess I have a problem with the 'fixed point' definition.
This sounds too much like the Poynting Vector.

If there is a battery, and a resistor hooked up with wires
to the battery, the resistor gets hot.

The thing going by through the wires, past a fixed point,
are so-many coulombs per second of electrons. The
power dissipates in the resistor, but even that is
an extended object. More so if one uses nichrome
wire rather than regular wire, and no other resistor
at all.

Power doesn't dissipate. Energy is converted from
electrical to thermal in the resistor. Power is the rate
of the conversion.

Gary