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JCE WebWare: Web-Based Learning Aids
William F. Coleman Wellesley College Wellesley, MA 02481
Peer-Reviewed JCE WebWare One of the goals of WebWare is to provide students and instructors with new, and hopefully improved, ways of looking at concepts from all areas of the chemistry curriculum. The technology available on the Web allows us to explore concepts in ways that are difficult, if not impossible, to present in a textbook. Additionally, the technology enables us to present many different approaches to the same concept, thereby expanding the range of leaning styles that can be successfully addressed in our courses. The latest entry in the peer-reviewed WebWare collection provides a multi-pronged approach to a concept that students initially think is trivial, then frequently begin to consider impenetrable, and finally may realize has a fundamental definition, but that definition often appears clouded in mathematical formalism. The concept in question is temperature. The WebWare component is a spreadsheet that has been designed to accompany an article, “The Relation of Temperature to Energy”, that will appear later this year in this Journal (1). The author provides the spreadsheet users with several interactive approaches to understanding the relationship between temperature and energy in different substances. Using a statistically based argument, one that frequently makes more sense to students than classical thermodynamic arguments alone, will provide useful teaching tools to those who believe that thermodynamics is best taught from this point of view.
Edward W. Fedosky University of Wisconsin–Madison Madison, WI 53715
Figure 1. A screen shot from the “Harmonic Osc.” worksheet of The Relation of Temperature to Energy Spreadsheet.
You can find The Relation of Temperature to Energy spreadsheet and the entire peer-reviewed collection of JCE WebWare at http://www.JCE.DivCHED.org/JCEDLib/ WebWare/collection/reviewed/. Literature Cited 1. King, Christopher. The Relation of Temperature to Energy. J. Chem. Educ. 2005, in press.
Table 1. Description of the Individual Worksheets in The Relation of Temperature to Energy Spreadsheet
Sheet
Description
Sheet
Description
Intro
Provides introductory figures and information.
Einstein Heat Cap.
Harmonic Osc.
Shows that temperature is the slope of a plot of entropy vs heat transferred.
Applies the harmonic oscillator model to a solid. The Einstein temperature can be varied to find the best fit to the heat capacity of silver metal.
Same Temp.
Shows that what two objects at the same temperature have in common is the slope of a plot of entropy vs heat transferred.
Large Systems
The determination of the lowest possible non-zero temperature for a large system. The gamma function and the Stirling approximation are presented.
Harmonic Osc. Ave
Same as the “Harmonic Osc.” sheet, except an average is used to determine temperatures.
Large Systems, Ave.
Same as the “Large Systems” sheet, except an average is used to determine temperatures.
Heat Capacity
Compares experimental and calculated heat capacities of N2. Also uses Excel’s built-in Solver tool to find the best parameters for the Shomate equation.
www.JCE.DivCHED.org
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Mystery Heat Cap. 1 and Mystery Heat Cap. 2
The user identifies a gas from its heat capacity data by varying the separation between energy levels.
Cv Examples
Presents the heat capacities, Cv, both experimental (Shomate equation) and calculated (harmonic oscillator model) of 17 different diatomic molecules. The user can add data for additional molecules.
2-level
Presents the temperature of a two-level system, which can be negative.
2-level large
Extends the “2-level” sheet to handle systems with large numbers of particles.
Appendix
A brief discussion about deriving temperature as a function of internal energy.
Vol. 82 No. 4 April 2005
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Journal of Chemical Education
655
