Nonentity

Today's tiny progress, cutting out drilling, threading and countersinking two aluminium plates to sandwich the Peltier modules. Soldering them up in series and getting ready to check their productivity.
I was chatting on Skype again today, all kinds of topics. Then on to the piano for a short go and at the boxing bag, then just before bathtime the straggly insect presence on the table prompted the kids and I to start up on sustainable energy and the Stan Meyer phenomenon again.
I mentioned Quantum mechanics and the tiny understanding I have of it. I was surprised to find that I was talking to people with no knowledge at all, so we had to go to wikipedia, we got this as a starter.
In physics, a quantum (plural: quanta) is an indivisible entity of energy.
This led on to a discussion of what an entity is and we got this.
An entity is something that has a distinct, separate existence, though it need not be a material existence.
The second one is particularly indicative of the state of things today, I particularly like the last bit "though it need not be a material existence". I guess that is the wave or particle argument solved for light, it doesn't matter, a photon is an entity.
The thing is that there are all kinds of entities and nonentities in the world around us and when you start to apply rules of vocabulary with questions like "Is fire, clay, Sammy, water or a frequency an entity" the answers are interesting.
We got started on this because the phenomena of obtaining more energy out of a process than one puts in as hinted at in the S Meyer case is flatly stated to be an impossibility. But in the world of quanta, previous impossibilities have now been found to be impossible only to ourselves as fairly lumpy entities, not to these other highly diverse quantum entities with the cute names and flavors. They can be in two places at once or somehow behave identically to a twin separated by vast distances at the same instant.
Interesting stuff for a living room chat.