Table of Contents
Unit: First & Second Laws of Thermodynamics
Heat and Temperature (40 minutes)
- Ice calorimetry lab (Integrated Laboratory, 30 minutes)
- Comparing Thermodynamic Properties (SWBQs, 15 minutes)
- Dulong-Petit Law (Lecture, 5 minutes)
Introducing the First & Second Thermodynamic Laws (2 hours 55 minutes)
- Comparing Systems and Surroundings (Small Groups, 10 minutes)
- The First Thermodynamic Law (Lecture, 10 minutes)
- Snapping a Rubber Band (SWBQ and Lecture, 15 minutes)
- Hot Metal in Room Temperature Water (SWBQ, 3 minutes) (sometimes? could be skipped)
- The Second Thermodynamic Law (Lecture, 5 minutes)
- Thermodynamic Terminology (Thermodynaic Potentials) (Lecture, 7 minutes)
- The Thermodynamic Identity (Lecture, 5 minutes)
- Name the experiment (Activity, 25 minutes)
- Heat Capacity (Lecture, 10 minutes)
- Second ice calorimetry lab (Integrated Laboratory, 45 minutes)
Heat and Work (3 hours 40 minutes)
- Free expansion quiz and discussion (Activity, 40 minutes)
- Work in Thermodynamics (Lecture, 5 minutes)
- Using $pV$ and $TS$ Plots (Small groups, 35 minutes)
- Analyzing a Simple Cycle using a $pV$ Curve (Small groups, 65 minutes)
- Name the Experiment: Changing Entropy (Small groups, 15 minutes)
- Deriving the Carnot Efficiency (Lecture, 30 minutes)
Unit: Internal Energy
Maxwell Relations (1 hour 35 minutes)
- Monotonicity and State Functions (Lecture, 10 minutes) (CUT???)
- Legendre Transforms (Lecture, 5 minutes)
- Maxwell Relations (Lecture, 10 minutes)
- Seeking the right Maxwell Relation (Small groups, 20 minutes)
- Name the Experiment: Maxwell Relations (Small groups, 20 minutes)
- Name the (often skipped)Experiment: More Maxwell Relations (Small groups, 30 minutes) (Join with previous one, unify with paper)
Rubber Band Lab ()
- Rubber band lab (Integrated Laboratory, 1 hour 50 minutes)
Simple Cycles & Analyzing Thermodynamic Processes ()
- Always, Sometimes, or Never True (Small groups, 60 minutes) (could be skipped?)
Black Body Thermodynamics (30 minutes)
- Two Interacting Black Body Objects (Small groups, 30 minutes) (often skipped)
Unit: Statistical Mechanics
The Statistical Approach ()
- Comparing Statistical Mechanics to Thermodynamics (Lecture, 5 minutes)
- The Fairness Function (Lecture, 10 minutes)
- Combining Probabilities (Small Groups, 20 minutes)
Optimizing the Fairness ()
- Students as molecules dice activity (Kinesthetic, 25 minutes) (can be skipped, hard to manage, add for getting energy constraints and microcanonical ensembles, could split?) for getting energy constraints and microcanonical ensembles, could split?)
- Maximizing a Function (SWBQ, 5 minutes)
- Method of Lagrange Multipliers (Lecture, 10 minutes)
- Weighted Averages (Lecture, 10 minutes)
- Energy Constraints (Lecture, ?? minutes)
- Two Non-interacting Systems (SWBQs, 15 minutes)
- The Partition Function (Lecture, 10 minutes)
Moving from Statistics to Thermodynamics ()
- Fairness and Entropy (Lecture, 5 minutes)
- Relating the Internal Energy and Fairness (Lecture, 15 minutes)
Internal Energy of a Diatomic Gas (2 hours 10 minutes)
- Reviewing Several Energy Eigenvalues (Lecture, 10 minutes)
- Internal Energy of a Diatomic Ideal Gas (Lecture, 20 minutes)
- Calculating the Internal Energy of a Diatomic Ideal Gas (Small groups, 100 minutes)
The Third Thermodynamic Law (20 minutes)
- Third Law of Thermodynamics (Lecture, 20 minutes) (optional)






