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Thermodynamics for Tots to Teens Michele Perrin University of Missouri

Abstract

This paper describes ten different ways to use a temperature sensor to investigate thermodynamics with younger students. Physical concepts such as temperature scales, heat transfer, phase changes in water, Newton’s Law of Cooling, and calorimetry can be explored through typical playtime activities – touching (observation), pouring (manipulation), and sorting (classification). Activities such as mixing cups of hot and cold water allow children to continue experimenting with their first temperature “sensors” (their fingers), while formalizing the process of scientific inquiry with a simple, handheld measurement tool. Exposing students to proper thermodynamics principles and terminology at an early age prevents common misconceptions that surface when students reach college. Through the ten activities described in this paper, teachers can begin to build on a toddler’s intuitive thermodynamic notions to help assure success in later academic endeavors.

Introduction

One of the earliest subjects children learn is thermodynamics. Toddlers distinguish hot from cold through food, bath water, snow, sand boxes, and the kitchen stove. Repeatedly, throughout their early years, children experiment with the principles of temperature, heat transfer, phase change, and calorimetry. Yet, thermodynamics continues to be one of the toughest courses in an introductory engineering curriculum. Part of this perception is due to the plethora of technical terms, scientific principles, and mathematical algorithms that are contained in the course. As children play, they are never told that touching a hot stove is called “conduction” or feeling the sun warm your face is called “radiation.” In point of fact, they are constantly given negative feedback regarding their explorations into these beginning thermodynamics principles. “Don’t touch the stove or don’t stay out in the sun too long - you will get burned.”

Many freshmen enter college firmly entrenched in “ignorant certainty.”1,2 Their preconceptions about the way the world works are based on information passed on to them by persons in authority. Parents and teachers can unknowingly instill thermodynamic misconceptions in children as they mature. For example, a toddler demanding to know why an ice cube sitting on the table turns into water is often told the ice is “warming up.” These misconceptions are doubly hard to overturn, since there is a significant parent-child or teacher-child bond of loyalty involved. Many college professors assume that students are familiar with simple thermodynamic concepts by the time they reach their lecture halls. Unfortunately, this isn’t always true. A thermodynamics quiz given by the author to a group of high school students revealed that over half of them were not able to distinguish between heat and temperature by their Junior year. Clearly, if K-12 teachers continued to build on a toddler’s basic knowledge of heat and “Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Educations Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2005, American Society for Engineering Education”

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Perrin, M. (2005, June), Thermodynamics For Tots To Teens Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15152