[Fhsst-physics] Heat and properties of matter chapter

[Mark Horner]

Hi Gerald (and everyone)

Sorry about the delay (again!). Everything in this email is my opinion 
and I really welcome comments and discussion from everyone. The pdf file 
of the chapter is attached for reference for other people.

I spent some time looking at the heat and properties of matter chapter 
as a whole. I have a suggested restructuring and some comments.

I think it needs a reshuffle (all my fault for not sorting it out 
earlier). I have a proposal and I'd appreciate your and anyone else's 
input on the proposed structure. I do have comments on the some of the 
content too which I will put after the restructuring.

You didn't agree to finishing off the whole chapter so I don't mind 
doing the restructuring if you send me the .tex file as you have the 
latest one. I can also implement my comments for the sections you aren't 
working on.

In this structure I hope to start with simple everyday things and try to
slowly increase the maths difficulty and the level of abstraction.

Proposed structure - basically just need to rearrange what is there:
____________________________________________________________________

Matter:

* Short description of what we mean we talk about matter - include 
solids, liquids and gasses
* mention that all matter consists of particles but don't go into details

        (Reason: So we mentioned all the phases we'll discuss later
         and that they are all made up of particles of some sort)

Temperature:

* measure the average energy of the particles the matter is made up of 
[pg 35+ of current chapter]
* temperature scales
[pg 37+]

        (R: Now we have introduced the initial idea that temperature has
         to do with the motion of the particles, helps with explainging
         why temperature leads to phase changes etc.)

Density:

* define and explain density
[pg 1+]

        (R: Now we have introduced the two simplest concepts of this
         chapter and they relate to very simple everyday things)

Phases of matter:
        (R: Lets introduce phases phenomonologically)

* Solids
  talk about rigid structures of particles
[pg 3+]

* Liquids

* Gasses
[pg 18+]

        (R: Now we have discussed all the phases very simply in terms
         of how the particles within them are structured but without
         any mathematics)

Gasses:
        (Now we go through the properties of phases in more detail)

* Kinetic theory of gasses
[pg 21-30]

        (R: All the gasses stuff they can handle - try to group things
         in levels of complexity, leave out mean free path till later
         - some new maths skills required)

Liquids:

* Pressure
[pg 9-12]
        (R: We introduced the concept of pressure in gasses above)

Solids:

* Expansion/contraction with change in temperature

* Stress and strain
[pg 6-8]
        
        (R: These are not much more complicated mathematically and
         require similar mathematical skills as above)

Thermodynamics:

* Temperature of an isolated body
[pg 35]

* Thermal equilibrium
[pg 36]

* Internal energy
[pg 39]

* Specific heat

* Latent heat

Phases Diagrams II

[pg 19-21.5]

Optional Topics:

* Gasses - mean free path
[pg 31]

* Fluid Mechanics
[pg 12-17]

* Solids - Bragg diffraction
[pg 5-6]

________________________________________________

What do you think of it?

Here are some specific comments I made as I read through the sections:

Pg 1:
- we must be clear that when we say a given volume we can also mean a 
fix volume. I am worried about how weaker students will interpret the 
word given - we must use it as its basic physics terminology but it 
means somehting quite specific to us.
I would add "i.e. mass per unit volume"

Pg 2:
I would change olive oil to just oil

Pg 3:
I would tabulate the categories of solids - just to break up the flow
of constant text.

Pg 4:
We should try to find a pic describing the amorphous structure

pg 5:
I think we should expand the Bragg explanation a bit more but its nice 
thing to have in.

We also need to introduce Angstroms somewhere - i don't htink they occur 
anywhere else in the book

pg 7:
In the sentence "One way in which ... tensile testing." insert "... [ a 
process called] tensile testing."

pg 8:
The B-Bs stuff is a little lost on me. I am not sure what they are?

pg 9:
formula 1.6 is wrong - needs an "h" added. We should also add an 
explicit  dotted line along the tops of the fluid to make it super 
explicit that the depths of fluid are the same and there the pressure is.

pg 10:
I think we need another worked example before example 5

I think the best way to start the bouyant force section is to talk about 
what it feels like when you get in a river or pool - you feel lighter on 
your feet - why is this? Lets investigate it ...

pg 12:

At the end of the bouyant force section we should point out that if no 
water can get below the object then there is no force - a flat sheet on 
the bottom of a pool feels no bouyant force. I have seen quite a few 
university students get this wrong.

pg 15:
We should make the example activity at the bottom of the page stand out 
more - perhaps with a couple of pictures
We should eventually have lots of activities for students to do - maybe 
in an environemtn of their own.

pg 16 - 20:
We have to break this up more and make it more teenager friendly.

I am pretty happy with the gasses stuff up so I think we need to see how 
the restructuring looks and how the difficulty and complexity increaes.

We will have covered more than everything they need to know to start 
first year university.

Hope you all made it to the end :)

Cheers,

Mark

--
--

Mark Horner

Jabber/AIM/Yahoo:   marknewlyn 


Co-author:
http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/fhsst

"Life is but a seg-fault away ...

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heat-selfcontained.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document