Easy and Hard Derivatives

Highlights of the activity

1. This small group activity is designed to help students become familiar with the Partial Derivative Machine and how to think about measuring derivatives.
2. Students practice thinking about which derivatives are easy and hard to measure in the context of the PDM.
3. The whole class discussion focuses on becoming familiar with the PDM, how to think about derivatives, and which derivatives are easy to measure and which are hard.

Reasons to spend class time on the activity

This activity occurs during the “Interlude”, a brief course on the basic mathematics used in the “Energy and Entropy” Paradigm. This course primarily focuses on an introduction to partial derivatives and total differentials. We would like our students to have an understanding of how to measure partial derivatives, and specifically which derivatives are easy to measure and which are hard. This activity uses the Partial Derivative Machine (PDM) to gain a mechanical intuition of how to measure partial derivatives, avoiding the nuances of a thermodynamical system. Using the PDM, the students learn how to measure derivative using small differences, and observe which derivatives are easy to measure and which are not.

For a description of the Partial Derivative Machine visit this page.

Reflections

• Reflections from the original implementation.

• Reflections from "official" adapters/adopters.

• Reflections from the general public.

Instructor's Guide

• Wiki version