Talk:Principle of minimum energy

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I wouldn't say that the problem with the article is one of neutrality. Rather the difficulty is that the author wanted to address a misconception about the difference between energy and free energy and he/she lost sight of the rest of the content that the article needed. So I think this article is a sincere is somewhat ill-conceived attempt to address a subject that WP:Physics should address. However, I would think that the topic would be better addressed under free energy or canonical ensemble rather than principle of minimum energy, which is a bit of an obscure title. Alison Chaiken 18:32, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I would agree that there are misconceptions out there but when I look up this principle in other locations on the web I find it is always mentioned as "the principle of minimum energy" and it is always mentioned in connection with entropy. I think the title of the article should stand but the content needs to be tweaked a little. I will try to do that now.J S Lundeen 14:54, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move to minimum total potential energy principle and replacement

I have moved the former contents of the page to the minimum total potential energy principle page which is essentially the same thing. I have replaced it with the minimum energy principle for constant-entropy systems, as described in Callen (1985) "Thermodynamics and and introduction to Thermostatistics". PAR 02:09, 28 October 2006 (UTC)