People - Graduate Students - Student Research and Creative Achievement Week 2005
Physics Department Poster Presentations:
"Investigating Student
Understanding of Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics"
In the Physics Education Research Laboratory, we study student understanding of various physics concepts that are taught in physics courses. As part of our research, we are investigating how physics majors learn the concepts of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics in junior- and senior-level thermal physics courses. These concepts are important in investigations of various physical processes, as they represent more restrictive requirements on processes than the basic energy conservation statement provided by the first law of thermodynamics. Here we discuss student understanding of the role of entropy and the second law in three processes involving the expansion of an ideal gas: isothermal expansion, adiabatic expansion, and free expansion. Our research suggests that although upper-level undergraduate students often enter a thermal physics course with little understanding of either concept due to lack of previous exposure, most of these students emerge from the course with a decent ability to apply these concepts to problems dealing with various physical processes. This finding stands in sharp contrast to previous research done in introductory lecture-based courses, where students often demonstrate little or no conceptual growth in their understanding from pre-to post-instruction. However, a number of difficulties with specific aspects of the entropy concept are persistent, namely a failure to recognize the fact that entropy is a state function. Our results suggest that these difficulties can be exacerbated by the choice of physical process presented to the students.
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"Reshaping Curriculum to
Improve Student Understanding of Quantum Tunneling"
In the Physics Education Research Laboratory we study the reasoning students use while learning physics. As part of our work, we investigate student understanding of the phenomenon of quantum tunneling through a potential energy barrier. Research on this and other topics has informed the development of an introductory quantum physics course for non-science majors at the University of Maine. Students explore quantum tunneling and radioactive decay. While the level of correct qualitative responses given by students in this course is comparable that in populations of physics majors, student exam performance was weakest in graphical representations of tunneling. Major changes to the tunneling tutorials produced significant gains in the number of students correctly sketching and explaining graphs of the wave function representing various tunneling scenarios, while retaining strong performance on written exam questions. We discuss changes made to the course and tutorial material, and present data comparing student performance during the Fall 2003 and Fall 2004 semesters.
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