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I've always found those articles studying common student misconceptions and their causes interesting . There's quite a lot of physics publications dealing with

I've always found those articles studying common student misconceptions and their causes interesting . There's quite a lot of physics publications dealing with phenomenological primitives and concepts learned in other disciplines and how they influence students' learning of physics and might be misapplied. For example, this one describing common misconceptions about chemical bonding [1] Some misconceptions are so strong and common that you might even get teachers that have and propagate them. I remember having a thermodynamics teacher who would insist it's impossible to reduce the entropy of a closed (rather than isolated) system, despite making it clear in their classes that you can reduce the entropy of such system by work and / or heat transfer. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225227224_Some_Student_Misconceptions_in_Chemistry_A_Literature_Review_of_Chemical_Bonding https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225227224_Some_Stud...

codethief 5y ago
> reduce the entropy of a closed (rather than isolated) system How do you define "closed" and "isolated"? In fact, this is the first time I'm hearing of a distinction between the two terms. In my experience, they are used synonymously.
- Hayarotle 5y ago
  In a closed system, matter cannot be exchanged between the system and the surroundings, but energy can be exchanged (in form of work or heat). In an isolated system, neither matter nor energy can be exchanged [1]. Those are the definitions used in thermodynamics, but they might be conflated into a single concept in other contexts/disciplines [1] http://www.projects.bucknell.edu/LearnThermo/pages/Other%20Topics/open-and-closed-systems-simulations.html http://www.projects.bucknell.edu/LearnThermo/pages/Other%20T...
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    MC Hawking was wrong! He said "The earth is a not a closed system; it's powered by the sun!" Anyway, that's not so much a misconception as it just terrible vocabulary.

codethief 5y ago

> reduce the entropy of a closed (rather than isolated) system How do you define "closed" and "isolated"? In fact, this is the first time I'm hearing of a distinction between the two terms. In my experience, they are used synonymously.

Hayarotle 5y ago
In a closed system, matter cannot be exchanged between the system and the surroundings, but energy can be exchanged (in form of work or heat). In an isolated system, neither matter nor energy can be exchanged [1]. Those are the definitions used in thermodynamics, but they might be conflated into a single concept in other contexts/disciplines [1] http://www.projects.bucknell.edu/LearnThermo/pages/Other%20Topics/open-and-closed-systems-simulations.html http://www.projects.bucknell.edu/LearnThermo/pages/Other%20T...
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  MC Hawking was wrong! He said "The earth is a not a closed system; it's powered by the sun!" Anyway, that's not so much a misconception as it just terrible vocabulary.