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Re: [Phys-l] Caloric



I agree.

We often have big debates over here (UK) about the teaching of energy. We have to teach it lower down in the school system (to 11-14 year olds) because they'll come across the concept in biology and chemistry lessons. This makes life difficult because pupils won't have reached the point where they can use the relevant equations so understanding that it's an abstract mathematical concept is too many steps ahead. The next best alternative seems to be to use a quantitative approach without involving any actual equations (apart from basic sum type ones).

I think the consensus (over here) is that we should try and avoid teaching energy in ways that reinforce the caloric idea but that's not always easy. I produced a set of resources that proved very successful in the lab but which I'm not hugely keen on because they reinforce the notion of some "stuff" being transferred. {They're at http://www.schools-christ-wales.com/Curriculum/PhysicsEnergy/CCB%20Energy.htm}

Reasons for avoiding the caloric idea are mainly to do with the clouding of what's going on by the use of energy explanations. You quite often read high level sounding explanations of phenomena or experimental results that explain everything in terms of energy and give very little real insight into what's really going on.

The other reason is that we might end up with a population who realise that "crystal energy" doesn't mean much.

The other side of the coin is that imagining that there's this stuff that gets sloshed around with certain rules determining its behaviour does seem to be easy and doesn't go wrong that much of the time.

Cheers

Gary


G. D. Williams,
Editor, Physics Education
National Coordinator, IoP Teacher Network
gary.williams@iop.org
gdwilliams100@hotmail.com





From: JMGreen <jmgreen@sisna.com>
Reply-To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Caloric
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 13:47:59 -0600

There was not much response to the issue of caloric thus far. Let
me be more direct:

For members of this list what is the difference in your
views/ideas/images between "heat" and "caloric"?

I get the impression that generally it is thought that they both are
fluids -- or fluid-like -- of course if we thought about it a bit, we
would have to say that the total amount of caloric is conserved
universally and we usually don't think of heat as being conserved --
except that some of us think of heat as energy and then it would have
to be conserved.

As far as I can see there is not much difference between Empedocles'
"fire" (of air, earth, water, and fire days) and today's "heat"

We are quick to say that we _have_ changed, but it looks to me as
if all we have changed are the words -- from fire to phlogiston to
caloric to heat -- but not the thinking,

Please comment

Jim

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