This sequence of activities is designed to provide an opportunity for students to connect partial derivatives with physical experiments in thermodynamics. Small groups are tasked with designing experiments which could be used to measure a partial derivative from thermodynamics. These activities are intended to encourage students to actively think about the physical meaning of partial derivatives throughout thermodynamics problems and demonstrate that some are difficult to measure experimentally but can be expressed in equivalent ways in order to be more easily measured.
(DELETE) In this small group activity, students are asked to design two ways in which to experimentally measure a given partial derivative. This activity is an extension of Name The Experiment: Maxwell Relations and is typically assigned as an additional challenge. This activity can be made more difficult by not mentioning the use of Maxwell relations at the beginning.