• Open Access

Investigating graduate student reasoning on a conceptual entropy questionnaire

Nathan Crossette, Michael Vignal, and Bethany R. Wilcox
Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 17, 020119 – Published 20 September 2021

Abstract

Student learning in upper-division thermal physics has not been studied to the same extent as in other courses like electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. Studies addressing reasoning and learning at the graduate level are even more limited. In this study, we conducted think-aloud interviews with eight graduate students involving questions centered around a set of entropy related conceptual tasks, two of which are similar to tasks presented to undergraduates in other studies. We discuss patterns in student reasoning on each question then discuss themes that appeared across questions. We identify conceptual resources that students frequently used to reason about the interview tasks and compare them to prior work. We observed graduate students commonly thinking about entropy in relationship to a number of states, even in situations where such a connection was not directly relevant. Graduate students also frequently made direct associations between entropy and temperature, despite there being no general, explicit relationship between the two quantities. On the whole, graduate students demonstrated adaptability and metacognitive awareness in their approach to reasoning about entropy.

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  • Received 26 March 2021
  • Accepted 2 August 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.17.020119

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Physics Education Research

Authors & Affiliations

Nathan Crossette, Michael Vignal, and Bethany R. Wilcox

  • Department of Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA

Article Text

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Issue

Vol. 17, Iss. 2 — July - December 2021

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