Scholarly Commons

Laboratory Exercises for Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics

I report on the results of my work setting up laboratory exercises to illustrate fundamental principles of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics such as adiabatic expansion, Boyle's law, Charles’ law, and thermal conductivity. Students were required to perform the listed experiments and keep a lab notebook to record data and report their results at the end of the labs. A pretest was administered at the beginning of this process and student gains were evaluated by a posttest. Additionally, a student survey was conducted on the last day to determine student satisfaction and confidence in the material learned.