The Electrician had good suggestions, Amazon’s delivery on the IEEE dictionary is 1 to 2 MONTHS, so I bought a used one for $180, but it won’t get here until next week. The Wikipedia entry [
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passivity_(engineering) ] has an interesting perspective in the first two paragraphs;
“Passivity is a property of engineering systems, used in a variety of engineering disciplines, but most commonly found in analog electronics and control systems. A passive component, depending on field, may be either a component that consumes (but does not produce) energy (thermodynamic passivity), or a component that is incapable of power gain (incremental passivity).
A component that is not passive is called an active component. An electronic circuit consisting entirely of passive components is called a passive circuit (and has the same properties as a passive component). Used without a qualifier, the term passive is ambiguous. Typically, analog designers use this term to refer to incrementally passive components and systems, while control systems engineers will use this to refer to thermodynamically passive ones.”
Then depending on one’s engineering discipline;
“Thermodynamic passivity
In control systems and circuit network theory, a passive component or circuit is one that consumes energy, but does not produce energy. Under this methodology, voltage and current sources are considered active, while resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors, tunnel diodes, glow tubes, metamaterials and other dissipative and energy-neutral components are considered passive.”
“Incremental passivity
In circuit design, informally, passive components refer to ones that are not capable of power gain; this means they cannot amplify signals. Under this definition, passive components include capacitors, inductors, resistors, diodes, transformers, voltage sources, and current sources. They exclude devices like transistors, vacuum tubes, relays, tunnel diodes, and glow tubes.”
Wow, I can’t wait to see what the IEEE dictionary says. The Wikipedia article really sums it up in the second paragraph, “Used without a qualifier, the term passive is ambiguous.” Which crutschow perfectly illustrates with the “saturable core amplifier” and “carbon mic as an amplifier”. MisterT rightly dings me for using “seems”, I was trying to “weasel word” the definition to allow non-linear distortion from something we expect to be “inert” or “benign”.
I know “inert” or “benign” will probably add fuel to the fire.