Information and Entropy, Energy and Exergy for Non-majors

This past winter saw the first run of a flipped class for any first year undergraduate who had taken mechanics, that taught them to think their way rigorously through questions like: 1) Why is it so much harder to remove CO2 from the atmosphere than to pump it into the atmosphere? and, 2) If energy is conserved as we learned in mechanics, what do we mean by the consumption or production of energy and why do we have an energy crisis? This course introduced information entropy, Boltzmann entropy, and the second law of thermodynamics and ended with a discussion of exergy, all without the blizzard of partial derivatives featured in more advanced classes, but nevertheless in a way that the students came away with an understanding of the essence of these fundamental concepts that they can rely upon throughout whatever they do in future, including as critical thinkers. In this talk, I will discuss the goals, development, and content of this course, as well as the initial reception and future directions, and share a way for everyone to access the online content.