Tobin was clearing referring to the kinetic energy of a one ton automobile moving at 60 mph relative to the road surface. This computation need take no account of frictional forces or air resistance; the same result would be obtained if we envisioned a 907 kg projectile approaching an asteroid at 26.7 m/s.

Mugaliens is referring to the power (energy per unit time) which is required to sustain the automobile's motion, which is the energy lost to frictional forces, air resistance, or "waste heat" (once the car has gotten up to speed; I guess the engine has to work a bit harder in the acceleration phase, especially if the driver puts the pedal to the metal).

For the mathematically inclined: someone should probably mention that the Uncertainty Principle can be considered to arise naturally in functional analysis (the study of linear operators on function spaces, which are typically infinite dimensional, and are often examples of a Hilbert space or Banach space), and there are many generalizations both in pure math and in mathematical physics. A keyword for the pure math side which is becoming increasing popular is Ore algebra and its special case, Weyl algebra. If anyone's interested, I can give citations.

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Chris Hillman

Read these PF posts. Avoid Wikipedia--- except for these versions. Read this and this suggested sticky. When asked for advice, I always say: never take advice!