Tag Archives: entropy

Popping balloons

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Balloons ready for popping

Balloons ripe for popping!

Each year in my thermodynamics class I have some fun popping balloons and talking about irreversibilities that occur in order to satisfy the second law of thermodynamics.  The popping balloon represents the unconstrained expansion of a gas and is one form of irreversibility.  Other irreversibilities, including friction and heat transfer, are discussed in the video clip on Entropy in our MOOC on Energy: Thermodynamics in Everyday Life which will rerun from October 3rd, 2016.

Last week I was in Florida at the Annual Conference of the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) and Clive Siviour, in his JSA Young Investigator Lecture, used balloon popping to illustrate something completely different.  He was talking about the way high-speed photography allows us to see events that are invisible to the naked eye.  This is similar to the way a microscope reveals the form and structure of objects that are also invisible to the naked eye.  In other words, a high-speed camera allows us to observe events in the temporal domain and a microscope enables us to observe structure in the spatial domain.  Of course you can combine the two technologies together to observe the very small moving very fast, for instance blood flow in capillaries.

Clive’s lecture was on ‘Techniques for High Rate Properties of Polymers’ and of course balloons are polymers and experience high rates of deformation when popped.  He went on to talk about measuring properties of polymers and their application in objects as diverse as cycle helmets and mobile phones.

Entropy in poetry

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WIN_20140716_190901 (2)Few weeks ago I mentioned about reading undergraduate dissertations [see my post entitled ‘A Startling Result‘ on May 18th, 2016] and about a year ago I wrote about the low quality of prose produced by engineers [see my post entitled ‘Reader, Reader, Reader‘ on April 15th, 2015 ].  Coleridge described prose as words in the best order and poetry as the best words in the best order. So today I’d like to direct you to a poem entitled ‘Entropy‘ by Neil Rollinson from his anthology ‘Spanish Fly’.  Here are a few lines from it:

“I open the window, the sky is dark
and the house is also cooling, the garden,
the summer lawn, all of it finding an equilibrium.”

I came across it while reading an anthology called ‘A Quark for Mister Mark: 101 Poems about Science‘ edited by Maurice Riordan and Jon Turney.  I was dipping into it while enjoying a pint in our backyard after a personal battle with entropy: painting rusting railings in our yard.

I was reviewing ‘A Quark for Mister Mark’ as potential reading material for a module on Technical Writing as part of our new CPD programme on Advanced Technical Skills.

Knowledge spheres

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Out-of-focus image from optical microscope of 10 micron diameter polystrene spheres in water

10 micron diameter polystyrene spheres in water (see Holes in fluids)

There is a well-known quote from Blaise Pascal: ‘Knowledge is like a sphere, the greater its volume, the larger its contact with the unknown’.  Presumably, Pascal was eloquently observing that the more we know, the more we realise how much we don’t know and the more questions that we have.  Perhaps this is also a test of whether we have acquired knowledge and understanding or only information; because the acquisition of knowledge and understanding will lead to further questions, whereas information tends simply to overwhelm us.  We need to process information into some form of ordered structure in order to gain understanding and render it more useful.  Of course, as in any process that involves increasing order and reducing entropy, this involves an expenditure of available energy or effort.  What makes it interesting and stimulating when mentoring learners on a MOOC is that very many more of them are prepared to make that effort than in a class of undergraduate students.  Some of their questions, including (or perhaps especially) the tangential ones, cause me to think about concepts in a new way and this increases my own knowledge sphere.  Lewis Hyde remarks in his book, The Gift, that ‘ideas might be treated as gifts in science’ and ‘a circulation of gifts nourishes [a] part of our spirit’. I would like to think this is happening in a MOOC, both between the educator and learners and between learners.  In my experience, it is a culture that has been lost from the undergraduate classroom, which is to the detriment of both educator and student.

Free: Energy! Thermodynamics in Everyday Life

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sunTalking to camera is difficult…

For the last few weeks I have been spending a considerable proportion of my working hours in front of a camera shooting video clips for a MOOC, a Massive Online Open Course. The first results of this effort and those of my colleagues Matt O’Rourke and Rob Lindsay in the University’s Centre for Lifelong Learning are now available as a trailer. The initial reviews were ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’, so go ahead and watch it!

Innovation to support learning

Some people have commented on the lack of pedagogical foundation in many MOOCs. However, I think we are being quite innovative in the following ways:

  • we are using an established pedagogy, 5Es (see the next paragraph for more explanation),
  • we have designed three do-it-at-home laboratory exercises,
  • the five-week MOOC will run in parallel with the delivery of the traditional course to first year undergraduates in Liverpool and,
  • the traditional lectures will be repeated at the university’s campus in London two evenings each week.

The lectures in London will allow students living around London to meet each other and me, as well as, of course, experience the energy of the live delivery of the course.

For students worldwide (and in London)

If you are a student who has or is struggling with elementary Thermodynamics then register for the free MOOC which will start in February 2016. I will cover the curriculum content of most ‘A’ level modules and introductory undergraduate courses in Thermodynamics. If you are in London and would like to attend the lectures then contact me and I will send you more details.

For teachers/instructors anywhere

If you are a teacher, tutor or lecturer then consider bringing it to the attention of your students. I will be taking a different approach to the traditional way of teaching classical thermodynamics based on my experience teaching at the University of Liverpool using the Everyday Engineering examples featured on this blog together with the 5Es approach to lecture or lesson plans. If you would like to use it in parallel with your own lectures then get in touch with me so that we can talk about synchronization.

5Es

The 5Es are Engage (the students), Explore (the topic), Explain (the principles underpinning the topic), Elaborate (using the principles to analyse the topic) and Evaluate (ask the students to evaluate their learning by performing some analysis). The course has been well-received by students and nearly a thousand have taken it over last four years. This year we are making into a five-week MOOC so that thousands more can learn using it.

Sources:

Real life thermodynamics

Bybee RW, Taylor JA, Gardner A, van Scotter P, Powell JC, Westbrook A & Landes N, The BSCS 5E Instructional model: origins, effectiveness and applications, BSCS Colorado Srings, 2006.

Sian Bayne & Jen Ross, The pedagogy of the MOOC: the UK view,  Higher Education Academy, 2014

Paul Stacy, The pedagogy of MOOCs, http://edtechfrontier.com/2013/05/11/the-pedagogy-of-moocs/