In a previous column, I discussed how partisan politics relates to Newton’s Laws of Motion. Physics’ concept of inertia (resistance to a body’s change of motion) relates to the difficulty of passing new initiatives in the current polarized political environment.

As soon as a clear case is made for a new program or law, a host of arguments against change come forth, usually based on fear and worst case scenarios. Some of these objectors regard the U.S. government as an entity ready to take away our freedoms, even those in our Constitution on which the government is based.

 In this column, I want to show how some words and concepts in fundamental science have been distorted in political use. Perhaps learning how clearly these words are used in science will make some readers realize the dishonesty of politicians who wrap these respectable terms around their unquestioned beliefs.

 A key fundamental of science is conservation. Conservation relates to physical quantities that under certain conditions will not change. For instance, for an isolated system, the total amount of energy can’t change.

An isolated system is a collection of objects with a boundary where neither matter nor energy can enter or leave. This law is called the Conservation of Energy or the First Law of Thermodynamics.

This law allows energy to change forms and to shift from one body to another. For a body or heat engine, this Law can be restated as: Change in Internal Energy equals Heat added to a system minus Work done by the system.

A good example of Conservation of Energy is a body falling over a short distance where air resistance can be neglected. Then the sum of this body’s motion (or kinetic) energy plus the body’s positional (or gravitational) energy is conserved. These two energies are often called the Mechanical Energy of a body.

If one knows the gravitational energy of a body at the moment of release, you can predict its motion energy as it falls toward the ground by the Conservation of Mechanical Energy.

 A Conservative Force is a force whose work (product of force times distance) depends only on the start and finish position. Electric and magnetic forces are Conservative Forces while Friction is a non-conservative force. (If you move furniture, the work you do in overcoming friction depends on the path you move the furniture, not just where the furniture starts and finishes.)

 When considering the extraction of fossil fuels from the Earth’s crust, there is a limited amount of these fuels that can be economically removed. When it takes more energy to remove the fuels than the energy released by the fuels, mining or drilling will stop. This condition is given by the ratio of Energy Released over the Energy Invested or EROEI equals 1.

What characterizes most “conservatives”’ is a belief that technology will advance in such a way that fossil fuels will always be available in the quantity we need. It is true that oil exploration methods are much more advanced than in past decades; but each year, we discover only a fraction of the oil that the world consumes.

Since 2005, there has been a plateau in global oil production at about 85 million barrels per day. And of these barrels, the U.S. consumes about 21 million barrels or 25 percent of the global total. How long will the U.S. with less than 5 percent of the world’s population consume 25 percent of the oil?

 Our need for more domestic petroleum has forced our oil companies to drill deep below the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico using gigantic platforms that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Unless a large amount of oil is found (to offset the huge cost of offshore drilling) these oil rigs lose money.

 Most “conservatives” berate government spending that subsidize renewable energy sources, but these renewable projects don’t have the devastating impact on the environment that offshore oil drilling and mountain top blasting have.

It would make more linguistic sense to rename these objectors the “Frictionaires,” bringing to politics mostly heat and opposition to change than alternatives. It takes less thought to attack someone else’s ideas than to propose your own ideas.

 Yesterday morning, the moon swung from the morning to the evening side of the sun. Tomorrow at dusk, you should be able to see a very slender crescent moon underneath the brilliant planet Venus in the 9:15 p.m. western dusk.

On Thursday, the crescent moon will appear below and to the left of the planet Mars. On Friday evening, the half full evening moon will appear below and to the right of the planet Saturn.

 There will be a series of planetarium programs open to the public and the parents of our new students starting this Friday at 7 p.m. There will be programs June 20 at 7 p.m. In the following week, there will be a programs on June 23, June 25 and June 28, all at 7 p.m.

The Planetarium is just off the front lobby of Tawes Hall in room 302. There are rest rooms further down the central hall. Our program will introduce the 2010 Summer Evening Sights including the planets, our moon and the main stars and groups. Please arrive early, as late comers are not easily admitted.

Bob Doyle invites questions and comments; contact him at rdoyle@frostburg.edu .