An integrated approach to thermodynamics in the introductory physics course

El Cuento del Demonio de Maxwell, una Propuesta Didáctica para la Enseñanza de Conceptos Básicos de Termodinámica

“…El concepto de entropía es considerado como algo misterioso y difícil de comprender, sin embargo la conservación y la degradación de la energía no deberían ser conceptos contradictorios sino complementarios. La forma de presentar al alumno el concepto de entropía, que cuantifica la degradación, no puede dejar de lado a los modelos microscópicos ni a los aspectos estadísticos (Alonso y Finn, 1995) que son los que le permitirán comprender los términos corrientes y confusos de "orden" y "desorden". El análisis microscópico de las variables termodinámicas ayuda a desarrollar en el alumno un perfil epistemológico de carácter marcadamente racionalista que se resalta sobre el clásico perfil empírico que en general caracteriza a la formación en química (Bachelard, 2003).…”

Teaching of Energy Issues: A Debate Proposal for a Global Reorientation

“…Difficulties associated with the construction of the concept of heat have been even bigger than in the case of work, and they include the confusion between heat and temperature, the conception of heat as a material fluid À which corresponds historically to the caloric theory À or the current TEACHING OF ENERGY ISSUES interpretation of heat as a form of energy (Tarsitani & Vicentini 1991;Bauman 1992;Alonso & Finn 1995;Arons 1999). These ideas must not be simply rejected as errors, but positively valued as part of the construction process of the current conception of heat.…”

“…Therefore, heat, like macroscopic work, is not a form of energy but rather a mechanism of exchange of energy between the particles of the system and the surroundings (Atkins 1984;Tarsitani & Vicentini 1991;Alonso & Finn 1995;Arons 1997). An exchange that, in the case of heat, takes place when systems at different temperatures (i.e., systems whose particles have different average energies) are put together and their particles interact.…”

Radiation thermodynamics with applications to lasing and fluorescent cooling

“…2 Some authors explicitly distinguish radiation as a third category of energy transfer. 3 However there is nothing special about radiation in this regard; any irreversible transfer of energy between two systems generally involves a mixture of heat and work. For example, when a block slides over a rough table, there is both mechanical work involved in the bending of asperities on the surfaces of the block and the table, and heat transfer between portions of the block and table at different temperatures.…”