Some blog followers might be interested in a recent discussion-list post “What's the Meaning of ‘Direct Instruction’? - Response to Camp” [Hake (2012b)]. The abstract reads:
*************************************************
ABSTRACT: In response to my post “What's the Meaning of 'Direct Instruction” (aka “The Effective But Forgotten Benezet Method of K-8 Education - Response to Camp”) [Hake (2012a)] at http://bit.ly/PWS8aj, Paul Camp at http://bit.ly/Sn9OmP (non-subscribers may need to fill out a form to gain access) made 4 points:
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111
1. Camp quoted Klahr as quoted in a CMU (1998) press release “Carnegie Mellon Researchers Say Direct Instruction, Rather Than ‘Discovery Learning’ Is Best Way To Teach Process Skills In Science” at http://bit.ly/QoB9RX that advertised Chen & Klahr (1999) http://bit.ly/OXCT1h.
Of course, the press release should have placed “Direct Instruction” in quotes to indicate Chen & Klahr’s own restricted meaning of that phrase.
Camp might not have been misled by CMU (1998) if he had been aware of (or not dismissed) the final section “CAUTION: WHAT'S IN A NAME?” in “Cognitive Research and Elementary Science Instruction: From the Laboratory, to the Classroom, and Back” [Klahr & Li (2005)] at http://bit.ly/Q2ls3d (scroll down and click on the title).
Klahr & Li wrote [my CAPS]: “In hindsight, we may have muddied the interpretation of our findings by incorporating popular terminology like ‘direct instruction’ and ‘discovery learning’ into articles and public presentations of Chen & Klahr (1999) and Klahr & Nigam (2004) http://bit.ly/UuSw4d. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . One thing is clear from all this: IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR THE FIELD OF EDUCATION TO MAKE MORE PRECISE USE OF TERMINOLOGY before moving on to public debates and policy decisions. Indeed it is surprising that when education researchers and science educators join in heated debates about discovery learning, direct instruction, inquiry, hands-on, or minds-on, they usually abandon one of the foundations of science - THE OPERATIONAL DEFINITION. The field of science cannot advance without clear, unambiguous, operationally defined, and replicable procedures. Education science is no exception
2222222222222222222222222222222222222222
2. Camp then wrote: “I see nothing particularly objectionable. . . .[[in CMU (1998)]]. . . . and certainly nothing that sounds like ‘drill and practice’.”
SO WHAT? Camp has evidently missed the point of Hake (2012a) that:
(a) education catch words such as “direct instruction” and “discovery learning” mean different things to different people; and
(b) most of those who attack the Benezet Method don’t define “direct instruction” as does Klahr. Instead most of them subscribe to the meaning of “direct instruction” implied by Mathematically Correct’s website http://bit.ly/beOVtu : " 'DRILL AND PRACTICE,' 'non-hands-on,' 'teach 'em the facts'. "
3333333333333333333333333333333333333333
3. Camp wrote: “I don't have time to track down everything [Hake writes], even if I had the inclination. All I can say is if what [he] didn't properly represent [his] views, perhaps [he] should have revised it. My responsibility ends with reading what [he] wrote.”
I agree with Camp's opinion that his responsibility ends with reading what I wrote. But the COMPLETE version of “what I wrote” is in my complete post at http://bit.ly/PWS8aj. For Camp to criticize my view on the basis of only the necessarily abbreviated abstract without bothering to read my complete post is, I think, (in Camp’s words - see below) “ethically borderline.”
4444444444444444444444444444444444444444
4. Camp wrote: “And, by the way, I don't appreciate having my words converted into shouting that I didn't do. That's ethically borderline.”
In the ASKII medium of discussion lists where italics are usually suppressed, one can attempt emphasis by, e.g., “*emphasis*” or “EMPHASIS”. My experience is that there’s not enough emphasis in “*emphasis*” so I prefer “EMPHASIS”. Camp’s opinion that “EMPHASIS” is "shouting" is, in my opinion NONSENSE!! (Oops, there I go again!).
*************************************************
To access the complete 22 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/P5wNzs.
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
Twitter: http://bit.ly/juvd52
“The true meaning of a term is found by observing what a man. . . .[[or woman]]. . . . does with it, not what . . . . . [[s(he)]]. . . . . . . says about it.”
- P.W. Bridgman (1927, 1960)
“When we say force is the cause of motion we talk metaphysics, and this definition, if we were content with it, would be absolutely sterile. For a definition to be of any use, it must teach us to measure force; moreover, that suffices; it is not at all necessary that it teach us what force is in itself, nor whether it is the cause or the effect of motion.”
- Henri Poincare (1905)
REFERENCES [URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 07 Sept 2012.
Bridgman, P.W. 1960. Logic of Modern Physics. Macmillan. First published in 1927. Amazon.com information at http://bit.ly/NWaIyU. An excerpt is online at http://bit.ly/RQDfHh. A Wikipedia entry on Bridgeman is at http://bit.ly/OTs5mh.
Hake, R.R. 2012a. “What's the Meaning of ‘Direct Instruction’ ” (aka “The Effective But Forgotten Benezet Method of K-8 Education - Response to Camp”) online on the OPEN AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/PWS8aj . Post of 3 Sep 2012 13:20:41-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake’sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/OIVVtI with a provision for comments.
Hake, R.R. 2012b. “What's the Meaning of ‘Direct Instruction’? - Response to Camp,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/P5wNzs. Post of 6 Sep 2012 16:58:09-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being distributed to various discussion lists.
Poincare, H. 1905. Science and Hypothesis, Walter Scott Publishing; online at http://bit.ly/9hVfA8 thanks to the Mead Project. A Wikipedia entry on Poincare is at http://bit.ly/b4jGVS.
Showing posts with label Paul Camp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Camp. Show all posts
Friday, September 7, 2012
Monday, September 3, 2012
What's the Meaning of “Direct Instruction”?
Some blog followers might be interested in a recent discussion-list post “The Effective But Forgotten Benezet Method of K-8 Education - Response to Camp” [Hake (2012b)], which might better have been titled “WHAT'S THE MEANING OF 'DIRECT INSTRUCTION'?” The abstract reads:
*********************************************
ABSTRACT: In my post “The Effective But Forgotten Benezet Method of K-8 Education” [Hake (2012a)] at http://bit.ly/SbTiWD, I listed as one of the reasons that the Benezet Method http://bit.ly/926tiM is virtually forgotten is “the opposition of those who favor ‘direct instruction’ (i.e., ‘drill and practice’) in the early grades.”
PhysLrnR’s Paul Camp responded: “THAT'S NOT WHAT DIRECT INSTRUCTION REFERS TO AND YOU KNOW IT.”
Camp evidently thinks “direct instruction” has some commonly accepted meaning. But had Camp bothered to scan my complete 21 kB post at http://bit.ly/SbTiWD, he might have noticed my emphasis on the ambiguity of that term and my guess as to its operational meaning to those who oppose the Benezet Method. Therein I wrote:
“The ambiguous phrase ‘direct instruction’ is used [here] in the ‘Mathematically Correct’ http://bit.ly/beOVtu sense discussed in ‘Language Ambiguities in Education Research’ (Hake, 2008) at http://bit.ly/bHTebD: “ ‘DRILL AND PRACTICE,’ ‘non-hands-on,’ ‘teach ’em the facts’ (Metzenberg, 1998) at http://bit.ly/9rGbSj (scroll down to just above “AAAS Benchmarks for Science Literacy”), and ‘non-discovery-learning,’ where ‘discovery learning’ means setting students adrift either in aimless play or ostensibly to discover on their own, say, Archimedes’ principle or Newton’s Second Law.”
In “Language Ambiguities in Education Research” I indicate my guesses as to what the following groups have meant by “direct instruction”: (a) Mathematically Correct, (b) physics education researchers, (c) Klahr & Nigam (2004) in “The equivalence of learning paths in early science instruction: effects of direct instruction and discovery learning” http://bit.ly/9jzh39 (the CMU server was down on 03 Sept 2012 but will probably recover), and (d) Association Of Direct Instruction http://www.adihome.org/.
*********************************************
To access the complete 16 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/PWS8aj.
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
Twitter http://bit.ly/juvd52
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
"When we say force is the cause of motion we talk metaphysics, and this definition, if we were content with it, would be absolutely sterile. For a definition to be of any use, it must teach us to measure force; moreover, that suffices; it is not at all necessary that it teach us what force is in itself, nor whether it is the cause or the effect of motion."
- Henri Poincare
REFERENCES [URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 03 Sept 2012.]
Hake, R.R. 2012a. “The Effective But Forgotten Benezet Method of K-8 Education,” online on the OPEN AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/SbTiWD. Post of 02 Sep 2012 15:28:15-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake’sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/ORLO6e with a provision for comments.
Hake, R.R. 2012b. “The Effective But Forgotten Benezet Method of K-8 Education – Response to Camp,” online on the OPEN AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/PWS8aj. Post of 3 Sep 2012 13:20:41-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.
*********************************************
ABSTRACT: In my post “The Effective But Forgotten Benezet Method of K-8 Education” [Hake (2012a)] at http://bit.ly/SbTiWD, I listed as one of the reasons that the Benezet Method http://bit.ly/926tiM is virtually forgotten is “the opposition of those who favor ‘direct instruction’ (i.e., ‘drill and practice’) in the early grades.”
PhysLrnR’s Paul Camp responded: “THAT'S NOT WHAT DIRECT INSTRUCTION REFERS TO AND YOU KNOW IT.”
Camp evidently thinks “direct instruction” has some commonly accepted meaning. But had Camp bothered to scan my complete 21 kB post at http://bit.ly/SbTiWD, he might have noticed my emphasis on the ambiguity of that term and my guess as to its operational meaning to those who oppose the Benezet Method. Therein I wrote:
“The ambiguous phrase ‘direct instruction’ is used [here] in the ‘Mathematically Correct’ http://bit.ly/beOVtu sense discussed in ‘Language Ambiguities in Education Research’ (Hake, 2008) at http://bit.ly/bHTebD: “ ‘DRILL AND PRACTICE,’ ‘non-hands-on,’ ‘teach ’em the facts’ (Metzenberg, 1998) at http://bit.ly/9rGbSj (scroll down to just above “AAAS Benchmarks for Science Literacy”), and ‘non-discovery-learning,’ where ‘discovery learning’ means setting students adrift either in aimless play or ostensibly to discover on their own, say, Archimedes’ principle or Newton’s Second Law.”
In “Language Ambiguities in Education Research” I indicate my guesses as to what the following groups have meant by “direct instruction”: (a) Mathematically Correct, (b) physics education researchers, (c) Klahr & Nigam (2004) in “The equivalence of learning paths in early science instruction: effects of direct instruction and discovery learning” http://bit.ly/9jzh39 (the CMU server was down on 03 Sept 2012 but will probably recover), and (d) Association Of Direct Instruction http://www.adihome.org/.
*********************************************
To access the complete 16 kB post please click on http://bit.ly/PWS8aj.
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
Twitter http://bit.ly/juvd52
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
"When we say force is the cause of motion we talk metaphysics, and this definition, if we were content with it, would be absolutely sterile. For a definition to be of any use, it must teach us to measure force; moreover, that suffices; it is not at all necessary that it teach us what force is in itself, nor whether it is the cause or the effect of motion."
- Henri Poincare
REFERENCES [URL’s shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 03 Sept 2012.]
Hake, R.R. 2012a. “The Effective But Forgotten Benezet Method of K-8 Education,” online on the OPEN AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/SbTiWD. Post of 02 Sep 2012 15:28:15-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake’sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/ORLO6e with a provision for comments.
Hake, R.R. 2012b. “The Effective But Forgotten Benezet Method of K-8 Education – Response to Camp,” online on the OPEN AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/PWS8aj. Post of 3 Sep 2012 13:20:41-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists.
Monday, December 19, 2011
The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century -ADDENDUM
Some blog followers might be interested in the following ADDENDUM [Hake (2011b)] to my post “The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century” [Hake (2011a)]:
PhysLrnR’s Paul Camp (2011a) wrote:
“Having taught thermal physics this semester, I'll testify that, at least for my 5 beginners, the point where phase space appeared totally baffled them. I brought it up only as part of a historical note about the arguments between Planck and Boltzmann so I didn't dwell on it, but phase space is perhaps a great deal less transparent to beginners than Lambert appears to believe. What actually spoke to them pretty powerfully (because it was embedded in a dice game activity) was Shannon entropy.”
To which Frank Lambert (2011b) replied [bracketed by lines “LLLLL. . . . “; my insert at “. . . . .[[insert]]. . . .”; my CAPS]:
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
MY APOLOGIES TO PROF. CAMP AND ALL PHYSICISTS!!
That brief piece . . . .[[“The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century” (Lambert, 2011a)]]. . . . . was designed primarily for chemists teaching beginners. But, foolishly, I changed my standard opening description of “entropy is fundamentally an evaluation of how spread out/dispersed in SPACE [or in a substance] is....” and included “phase space” rather than emphasizing simple “space”.
(The first example in most first-year chemistry texts is the isothermal expansion of a gas in a chamber when a valve to an adjoined evacuated chamber is opened: the kinetic and potential energy of the gas is unchanged, but it is spread to the larger final accessible space.)
I, agreeing with Professor Camp, disagree with some chemistry texts that then try to introduce microstates, baby phys chem, and inklings of phase space to naive frosh. The best chemistry texts - in my opinion (of the 22 first-year texts that have adopted my approach) -- are by Burdge (2011) or by Burdge and Overby (2012). They superbly present the entropy increase of a chem process in changes of volume, temperature, molecular complexity, molar mass, phase change and chemical reaction -- with diagrams of differences in energy levels/occupancy of energy levels, but not a word about microstates or Boltzmann stat mech or phase space. I think that those next steps in sophistication should all be left for physical chemistry, the usual third-year course in chemistry.
ALL references to Wikipedia “Entropy”. . . . .[[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy]]. . . . . and “Entropy (energy dispersal)”. . . . .[[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(energy_dispersal)]]. . . . SHOULD BE IGNORED! The former is a hopeless morass with Shannon enfolding Clausius, Maxwell, Boltzmann and Gibbs, while the latter was rewritten by a professor in economics -- from a spin-off by a non-academic person who attempted to have "energy dispersal" deleted from Wikipedia and was subsequently barred from contributing!
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
See, also the cogent response to the above by Paul Camp (2011b) who wrote (in part):
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
One of the reasons I taught Thermal Physics this semester was because I always hated it and that was because some of the fundamental concepts (notably entropy) never made any sense to me.
It took me some years, as a student, to understand what entropy is and the epiphany came when I tried to figure out what units it is measured in (oddly, none of the textbooks I used paid attention to this). When I realized it was basically an energy, then the first law made complete sense to me -- it is that portion of the energy of a system that is not available for doing work. All that crapola about disorder and everything was getting in the way of understanding.
Afterwards, the link with disorder made some sense. If all the particles in a gas are moving in the same direction (low disorder) they can do a lot of work, but if they are banging around at random, not so much.
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
BTW - To education aficionados Frank Lambert is less well known for his “Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy” than his “Post Gutenberg University Breakthrough” - see e.g.: “Editorially Speaking: Effective Teaching of Organic Chemistry” [Lambert (1963)] and the all-time classic must read: “The Lecture System in Teaching Science” [Morrison (1986)].
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands
President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References
which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)
rrhake@earthlink.net>
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
Academia: http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake
REFERENCES [All URL’s accessed on 18 Dec 2011; most shortened by http://bit.ly/.]
Camp, P. 2011a. “Re: The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century,” online on the CLOSED! :-( PhysLrnR archives at http://bit.ly/rViO7S. Post of 27 Dec 2011 23:13:05-0500 to PhysLrnR. To access the archives of PhysLnR one needs to subscribe, but that takes only a few minutes by clicking on http://bit.ly/nG318r and then clicking on “Join or Leave PHYSLRNR-LIST.” If you're busy, then subscribe using the “NOMAIL” option under “Miscellaneous.” Then, as a subscriber, you may access the archives and/or post messages at any time, while receiving NO MAIL from the list!
Camp, P. 2011b. “Re: The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century,” online on the CLOSED! :-( PhysLrnR archives at http://bit.ly/vUdYbL. To access the archives of PhysLnR see the information above in Camp (2011a).
Hake, R.R. 2009. “In Defense of Wikipedia” online on the OPEN ! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/fb4bJx. Post of 31 Aug 2009 16:41:53-0700 to AERA-L, Net-Gold, and Math-Teach. The abstract and link to the complete post were distributed to various discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/tTjuo1.
Hake, R.R. 2011a. “The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/s7heFg, post of 17 Dec 2011 21:35:08-0800, transmitted to AERA-L, Net-Gold, and various other discussion lists.
Hake, R.R. 2011b. "The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy - ADDENDUM," online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/vADrgv. Post of 18 Dec 2011 13:20:41-0800 to AERA-L, Net-Gold, and various other discussion lists.
Lambert, F.L. 1963. “Editorially Speaking: Effective Teaching of Organic Chemistry,” J. Chem. Ed. 40: 173-174; online at http://bit.ly/sZnEbI.
Lambert, F.L. 2011a. “The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century,” International Journal of Pure and Applied Chemistry 1(3), online at http://bit.ly/upGF5C, click “Full Article PDF” after accessing the URL. At http://entropysite.oxy.edu/, Lambert wrote “[This article's] major goal is to explain why brilliant physicists and chemists of the past century failed to explain entropy clearly - i.e., to develop an adequate conceptual explanation for the success of dS = dq/T. Certainly, the 'driving force' in this relationship is simple: the nature of q, energy, is to spread out, disperse in space/ in phase space if its constraints are lessened or removed.”
Lambert, F.L. 2011b. “Re: The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century,” online on the CLOSED! :-( PhysLrnR archives at http://bit.ly/tl0unt. Post of 17 Dec 2011 22:15:12-0800 to PhysLrnR. To access the archives of PhysLnR see the information above in Camp (2011a).
Morrison, R.T. 1986. “The Lecture System in Teaching Science,” in Proceedings of the Chicago Conferences on Liberal Education, Number 1, Undergraduate Education in Chemistry and Physics (edited by Marian R. Rice). The College Center for Curricular Thought: The University of Chicago, October 18-19, 1989; online at http://entropysite.oxy.edu/morrison.html thanks to Frank Lambert.
PhysLrnR’s Paul Camp (2011a) wrote:
“Having taught thermal physics this semester, I'll testify that, at least for my 5 beginners, the point where phase space appeared totally baffled them. I brought it up only as part of a historical note about the arguments between Planck and Boltzmann so I didn't dwell on it, but phase space is perhaps a great deal less transparent to beginners than Lambert appears to believe. What actually spoke to them pretty powerfully (because it was embedded in a dice game activity) was Shannon entropy.”
To which Frank Lambert (2011b) replied [bracketed by lines “LLLLL. . . . “; my insert at “. . . . .[[insert]]. . . .”; my CAPS]:
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
MY APOLOGIES TO PROF. CAMP AND ALL PHYSICISTS!!
That brief piece . . . .[[“The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century” (Lambert, 2011a)]]. . . . . was designed primarily for chemists teaching beginners. But, foolishly, I changed my standard opening description of “entropy is fundamentally an evaluation of how spread out/dispersed in SPACE [or in a substance] is....” and included “phase space” rather than emphasizing simple “space”.
(The first example in most first-year chemistry texts is the isothermal expansion of a gas in a chamber when a valve to an adjoined evacuated chamber is opened: the kinetic and potential energy of the gas is unchanged, but it is spread to the larger final accessible space.)
I, agreeing with Professor Camp, disagree with some chemistry texts that then try to introduce microstates, baby phys chem, and inklings of phase space to naive frosh. The best chemistry texts - in my opinion (of the 22 first-year texts that have adopted my approach) -- are by Burdge (2011) or by Burdge and Overby (2012). They superbly present the entropy increase of a chem process in changes of volume, temperature, molecular complexity, molar mass, phase change and chemical reaction -- with diagrams of differences in energy levels/occupancy of energy levels, but not a word about microstates or Boltzmann stat mech or phase space. I think that those next steps in sophistication should all be left for physical chemistry, the usual third-year course in chemistry.
ALL references to Wikipedia “Entropy”. . . . .[[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy]]. . . . . and “Entropy (energy dispersal)”. . . . .[[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(energy_dispersal)]]. . . . SHOULD BE IGNORED! The former is a hopeless morass with Shannon enfolding Clausius, Maxwell, Boltzmann and Gibbs, while the latter was rewritten by a professor in economics -- from a spin-off by a non-academic person who attempted to have "energy dispersal" deleted from Wikipedia and was subsequently barred from contributing!
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
See, also the cogent response to the above by Paul Camp (2011b) who wrote (in part):
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
One of the reasons I taught Thermal Physics this semester was because I always hated it and that was because some of the fundamental concepts (notably entropy) never made any sense to me.
It took me some years, as a student, to understand what entropy is and the epiphany came when I tried to figure out what units it is measured in (oddly, none of the textbooks I used paid attention to this). When I realized it was basically an energy, then the first law made complete sense to me -- it is that portion of the energy of a system that is not available for doing work. All that crapola about disorder and everything was getting in the way of understanding.
Afterwards, the link with disorder made some sense. If all the particles in a gas are moving in the same direction (low disorder) they can do a lot of work, but if they are banging around at random, not so much.
CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
BTW - To education aficionados Frank Lambert is less well known for his “Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy” than his “Post Gutenberg University Breakthrough” - see e.g.: “Editorially Speaking: Effective Teaching of Organic Chemistry” [Lambert (1963)] and the all-time classic must read: “The Lecture System in Teaching Science” [Morrison (1986)].
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands
President, PEdants for Definitive Academic References
which Recognize the Invention of the Internet (PEDARRII)
rrhake@earthlink.net>
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to SDI Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
Academia: http://iub.academia.edu/RichardHake
REFERENCES [All URL’s accessed on 18 Dec 2011; most shortened by http://bit.ly/.]
Camp, P. 2011a. “Re: The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century,” online on the CLOSED! :-( PhysLrnR archives at http://bit.ly/rViO7S. Post of 27 Dec 2011 23:13:05-0500 to PhysLrnR. To access the archives of PhysLnR one needs to subscribe, but that takes only a few minutes by clicking on http://bit.ly/nG318r and then clicking on “Join or Leave PHYSLRNR-LIST.” If you're busy, then subscribe using the “NOMAIL” option under “Miscellaneous.” Then, as a subscriber, you may access the archives and/or post messages at any time, while receiving NO MAIL from the list!
Camp, P. 2011b. “Re: The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century,” online on the CLOSED! :-( PhysLrnR archives at http://bit.ly/vUdYbL. To access the archives of PhysLnR see the information above in Camp (2011a).
Hake, R.R. 2009. “In Defense of Wikipedia” online on the OPEN ! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/fb4bJx. Post of 31 Aug 2009 16:41:53-0700 to AERA-L, Net-Gold, and Math-Teach. The abstract and link to the complete post were distributed to various discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/tTjuo1.
Hake, R.R. 2011a. “The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/s7heFg, post of 17 Dec 2011 21:35:08-0800, transmitted to AERA-L, Net-Gold, and various other discussion lists.
Hake, R.R. 2011b. "The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy - ADDENDUM," online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/vADrgv. Post of 18 Dec 2011 13:20:41-0800 to AERA-L, Net-Gold, and various other discussion lists.
Lambert, F.L. 1963. “Editorially Speaking: Effective Teaching of Organic Chemistry,” J. Chem. Ed. 40: 173-174; online at http://bit.ly/sZnEbI.
Lambert, F.L. 2011a. “The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century,” International Journal of Pure and Applied Chemistry 1(3), online at http://bit.ly/upGF5C, click “Full Article PDF” after accessing the URL. At http://entropysite.oxy.edu/, Lambert wrote “[This article's] major goal is to explain why brilliant physicists and chemists of the past century failed to explain entropy clearly - i.e., to develop an adequate conceptual explanation for the success of dS = dq/T. Certainly, the 'driving force' in this relationship is simple: the nature of q, energy, is to spread out, disperse in space/ in phase space if its constraints are lessened or removed.”
Lambert, F.L. 2011b. “Re: The Conceptual Meaning of Thermodynamic Entropy in the 21st Century,” online on the CLOSED! :-( PhysLrnR archives at http://bit.ly/tl0unt. Post of 17 Dec 2011 22:15:12-0800 to PhysLrnR. To access the archives of PhysLnR see the information above in Camp (2011a).
Morrison, R.T. 1986. “The Lecture System in Teaching Science,” in Proceedings of the Chicago Conferences on Liberal Education, Number 1, Undergraduate Education in Chemistry and Physics (edited by Marian R. Rice). The College Center for Curricular Thought: The University of Chicago, October 18-19, 1989; online at http://entropysite.oxy.edu/morrison.html thanks to Frank Lambert.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
