Phillips and Sanny's Response

In a recent paper, John W. Jewett Jr. tries to introduce a new definition of work. In conclusion he writes, “Much can be done to clarify the definition of work in textbook and classroom presentation to avoid conceptual inconsistencies and to remove the need for later correction to earlier statements and definitions.” I cannot agree more with this statement; however, instead of inventing a new definition for a rather old and well-developed concept, I used to use the standard and clear definition accepted by the most physicists. For example, take a classical physics textbook by Hans C. Ohanian. The most general definition of work is provided on p. 168, where we can read that for “a particle” that “moves along some given path from a point P1 to a point P2…the total work”