Collaborative Research: Creating a Common Thermodynamics

热力学和随机分子运动的基本统计图像是生物学的基础。为了理解从细胞中的呼吸和光合作用到生态系统的生存和稳定等过程，学生们需要对能量、能量的保存、能量的可用性和能量的转化有一个很好的理解。由于生物学是关于组织和结构的产生、维持和进化的，信息的概念及其统计机械伙伴熵是至关重要的。学生通常会在生物、化学和物理入门课上遇到能量、焓和熵。但是，这三个学科采用的方法可能截然不同。通常，他们做出不同的（未陈述的）假设，导致热力学定律的陈述在不同的类别中看起来不同。这种一致性的缺乏给学生对这些重要思想的连贯理解的发展带来了障碍。在这个项目中，我们与一个由四所大学的物理学家、化学家和生物学家组成的跨学科小组合作，以：(1)就共同的内容和表征方案达成一致；(2)创建一个文献调查，将学生对热力学概念的理解结果从化学、生物学和物理教育研究中汇集在一起；(3)研究学生对能量、熵、扩散和随机过程等基本概念的理解和态度；(4)创建网络材料，包括主动学习教学的文本和材料，用于生物学家的物理入门课程；(5)创建并验证一个工具来评估学生在这些主题上的学习成果。

Thermodynamics and the underlying statistical picture of random molecular motions are fundamental in biology. In order to make sense of processes ranging from respiration and photosynthesis in the cell to the survival and stabilization of ecosystems students need a good understanding of energy, its conservation, its availability, and its transformation. Since biology is about the generation, maintenance, and evolution of organization and structure, the concept of information and its statistical mechanical partner, entropy, is critical. Students typically encounter energy, enthalpy, and entropy in introductory biology, chemistry, and physics classes. But the approach taken in the three disciplines can be dramatically different. Often, they make different (unstated) assumptions resulting in statements of the laws of thermodynamics that look different in different classes. This lack of consistency raises barriers to students' development of a coherent understanding of these important ideas.In this project, we work with an interdisciplinary group of physicists, chemists, and biologists at four universities to (1) come to an agreement on a common content and representational scheme; (2) create a literature survey bringing together results about student understanding of concepts in thermodynamics from chemistry, biology, and physics education research; (3) study student understandings of and attitudes about the basic concepts of energy, entropy, diffusion, and stochastic processes; (4) create web materials including text and materials for active-learning instruction for use in an introductory physics course for biologists; and (5) create and validate an instrument to evaluate students' learning gains on these topics.