Electromagnetism as a world view: implications for the teaching of energy

There are considerable differences in the ways mechanics and electromagnetism conceptualize energy. In the former, energy is defined in terms of force and work in a process-like reasoning that remits us to the ”past” of a given body or system. Moreover, in the mechanical framework energy is ascribed to matter, i.e., one speaks of the energy of a system of bodies. The electromagnetic picture is quite different. There, energy assumes a form localized directly in the fields, i.e., if a region in space contains E → and/or B → fields, then there is energy. Furthermore, in electromag...