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Cooking With Chemistry: Marshmallows, Admin Stem For Success May 2023

Cooking With Chemistry: Marshmallows, Admin Stem For Success

STEM for Success Showcase

This lesson plan teaches students thermodynamics, foam, and other chemistry topics by cooking marshmallows.


Developing An Inquiry-Based Laboratory Project For Chem 142l Course At Bsu, Manuel Pina May 2021

Developing An Inquiry-Based Laboratory Project For Chem 142l Course At Bsu, Manuel Pina

Honors Program Theses and Projects

In addition to content knowledge, critical and independent thinking, scientific reasoning, and problem-solving skills are essential in preparing next generation of successful workforce. Since one of the biggest advantages of STEM disciplines is a “must-have” hands-on laboratory experience, it is intuitive to exploit this learning space to reinforce afore-mentioned skills. In this context, project-based (PBL) or inquiry-based (IBL) laboratory experiences are rapidly becoming mainstream pedagogical choice for many STEM instructors across United States.[1-4] PBL, and IBL are learning experiences that offer students an opportunity to experience realistic scientific process of discovery through carefully designed inquiry-driven and/or open-ended investigative laboratory …


Can CP Be Less Than CV?, Yingbin Ge, Samuel L. Montgomery, Gabriel L. Borrello Apr 2021

Can CP Be Less Than CV?, Yingbin Ge, Samuel L. Montgomery, Gabriel L. Borrello

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Can CP be less than CV? This is a fundamental question in physics, chemistry, chemical engineering, and mechanical engineering. This question hangs in the minds of many students, instructors, and researchers. The first instinct is to answer “Yes, for water between 0 and 4 °C” if one knows that water expands as temperature decreases in this temperature range. The same question is asked in several Physical Chemistry and Physics textbooks. Students are supposed to answer that water contracts when heated at below 4 °C in an isobaric process. Because work is done to the contracting water, less …


Student Understanding Of The Boltzmann Factor, Trevor I. Smith, Donald B. Mountcastle, John R. Thompson Sep 2015

Student Understanding Of The Boltzmann Factor, Trevor I. Smith, Donald B. Mountcastle, John R. Thompson

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship

We present results of our investigation into student understanding of the physical significance and utility of the Boltzmann factor in several simple models. We identify various justifications, both correct and incorrect, that students use when answering written questions that require application of the Boltzmann factor. Results from written data as well as teaching interviews suggest that many students can neither recognize situations in which the Boltzmann factor is applicable nor articulate the physical significance of the Boltzmann factor as an expression for multiplicity, a fundamental quantity of statistical mechanics. The specific student difficulties seen in the written data led us …


Identifying Student Difficulties With Heat Engines, Entropy, And The Carnot Cycle, Trevor I. Smith, Warren M. Christensen, Donald B. Mountcastle, John R. Thompson Sep 2015

Identifying Student Difficulties With Heat Engines, Entropy, And The Carnot Cycle, Trevor I. Smith, Warren M. Christensen, Donald B. Mountcastle, John R. Thompson

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship

We report on several specific student difficulties regarding the second law of thermodynamics in the context of heat engines within upper-division undergraduate thermal physics courses. Data come from ungraded written surveys, graded homework assignments, and videotaped classroom observations of tutorial activities. Written data show that students in these courses do not clearly articulate the connection between the Carnot cycle and the second law after lecture instruction. This result is consistent both within and across student populations. Observation data provide evidence for myriad difficulties related to entropy and heat engines, including students’ struggles in reasoning about situations that are physically impossible …


Updates To A Sequence Of Thermodynamics Experiments For Mechanical Engineering Technology Students, Roger A. Beardsley Jun 2013

Updates To A Sequence Of Thermodynamics Experiments For Mechanical Engineering Technology Students, Roger A. Beardsley

All Faculty Scholarship for the School of Graduate Studies and Research

This paper presents an outline of thermodynamics experiments and lab activities that accompany the introductory thermodynamics course for Mechanical Engineering Technology juniors at Central Washington University (CWU) in Ellensburg, Washington. It outlines and describes the current suite of thermodynamics lab activities, comparing the current suite of seven lab activities to a sequence outlined in an ASEE conference paper presented in 1995. Some lab activities in that paper have been replaced, while others have been updated. For example an experiment to measure the Joule-Thomson coefficient has been replaced with a First Law energy balance activity and the former First Law experiment …