Learning physics by experiment: XII. Entropy (intermediate)

The topic of entropy is not as intuitive as other topics for many students. Part of this difficulty lies in a lack of proper understanding of basic concepts in statistics, including the important phenomenon of randomness. One example of the latter is the simple case of tossing a fair coin 100 times and, although students readily agree that 50 heads and 50 tails is not guaranteed, they still tend to be disproportionally biased towards that result. Two experiments with fair dice were specifically designed to address this problem, and students immediately discovered that results varied greatly -- much more so than they had anticipated. This produced a definitive moment of "seeing is believing" and thereby encouraged thought processes that had not previously been established. Once such a foundation had been created, it was then possible to make steady progress with the original material. This approach represents a continuation of the philosophy in the ongoing series {[1-12], i.a.}, whose utility and robustness is reinforced by the positive learning outcomes experienced here.



[1] APR10.Z11.7; [2] APR12.J15.8; [3] APR14.D1.50; [4] APR18.F01.5; [5, 6, 7] MAR19.G70.102, 103, 104; [8, 9] MAR21.C15.12, H71.49; [10] APR22.F01.35; [11] MAR23.G00.188; [12] APR24.N00.64 (meetings.aps.org)