Originally Posted by
tomato coupe
I'd say that professor was in the minority among physicists regarding the phrase, and the fact that his Physics Department had no qualms using it in the title of the class is a pretty clear indication of that. Personally, I've never heard another physicist take issue with the term.
He was not in the physics department. He was in the engineering school and later became chair of that department.
IIRC, I think the point he was trying to make, is that if you have a temperature differential, you will automatically have heat, i.e., the transfer of thermal energy.
Which can get a little confusing when someone mentions a HEAT round, which does involve liquid copper, but stands for High-Explosive Anti-Tank, essentially a version of a shaped-charge.