Katharyn E. K. Nottis

Repairing Engineering Students’ Misconceptions About Energy and Thermodynamics

The concept of “energy” is central to the discipline of engineering; design of systems from heart valves to aircraft carriers relies in significant part on manipulation of energy to the engineer’s ends. Undergraduate engineering students encounter energy and energy-related concepts in a number of courses throughout their curricula in preparation for designing such systems in their careers. To work successfully with energy, engineering students need to understand the impacts of the allied concepts of the second law, internal energy and enthalpy, the distinction between energy and temperature, and the distinction between rate and amount of energy transfer. Students who demonstrate computational faculty with these areas may still exhibit significant misunderstandings about the underlying concepts when asked purely conceptual questions. Misunderstanding of energy related concepts will hinder students’ ability to correctly address problems at an expert level. Further, accurate conceptual understanding is key to sharing their work with the broader public. Understanding energy related concepts more accurately will enable broader society to make better choices about technology, energy conservation, and investment of resources. While standard lecture courses do little to reverse misconceptions in this and other areas, active engagement methods show significant promise for improving students’ understanding. We describe one approach, inquiry-based activities, that has shown promise in long-term repair of engineering students’ misconceptions in energy-related areas.

Undergraduate Engineering Students’ Understanding of Heat, Temperature, and Energy: An Examination by Gender and Major

Previous research has found that engineering students have difficulty distinguishing among heat, energy, and temperature concepts. Factors affecting the rate and amount of heat transferred, distinctions between temperature and energy, differences between temperature and how hot/cold something feels, and the effects of surface properties on heat transfer by radiation have been recurrently problematic. Since graduates need to understand these concepts to work with a variety of process operations, there is a need for them to understand these concepts after instruction. This exploratory study sought to determine whether undergraduate engineering students’ knowledge of four crucial concept areas in heat transfer significantly changed after instruction and whether this differed by gender and engineering major. Results showed that while participants significantly improved from pre-test to post-test, there was a moderate effect and the mean score on the post-test was below what most have considered concept mastery. The mean post-test score for males was significantly higher than that of females, and females did not significantly improve from pre-test to post-test. A significant interaction between gender and major was also found. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are provided.