Tutorial details

The first part of the tutorial begins with a review of mechanical work in the context of a block that can be considered to be a point particle. This section continues by leading students to extending the concept of work to a sample of ideal gas.

The second section presents students with the relationship between the work done on a thermally insulated ideal gas system and the change in internal energy of that system. The students are then lead to apply this relationship to an adiabatic compression. A student dialogue provides an opportunity to confront common assumptions about collisions among molecules giving rise to an increase in temperature. The third section deals with heat transfer. The first situation is the isochoric heating of an ideal gas system. Students are lead to sketch the process on a PV diagram.

The fourth part of the tutorial requires students to synthesize the ideas previously developed by applying the ideal gas law to an isothermal compression of an ideal gas system. The students must evaluate the sign of the work done on the gas from the direction of the piston motion and then infer the sign of the heat transfer. A final question forces students to consider that heat transfer is not necessarily accompanied by a change in temperature.

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Prerequisite tutorials

The Ideal gas law tutorial is a prerequisite to First law of thermodynamics.

Other prerequisites

The tutorial assumes that the students have had instruction on the ideal gas law and the first law of thermodynamics. Ideally the tutorial should be preceded by the tutorial on the ideal gas law.

Equipment

List

• white board or large sheet of paper with markers

Discussion