As one approach to moving beyond transmitting "inert" ideas to chemistry students, we use the term "teaching from rich contexts" to describe implementations of case studies or context-based learning based on systems thinking that provide deep and rich opportunities for learning crosscutting concepts through contexts. This…

The temperature dependence of the Gibbs energy and important quantities such as Henry's law constants, activity coefficients, and chemical equilibrium constants is usually calculated by using the Gibbs-Helmholtz equation. Although, this is a well-known approach and traditionally covered as part of any physical chemistry course, the required…

We have analytically explored the thermodynamics of free Bose and Fermi gases for the entire range of temperature, and have extended the same for harmonically trapped cases. We have obtained approximate chemical potentials for the quantum gases in closed forms of temperature so that the thermodynamic properties of the quantum gases become…

While the Clausius-Clapeyron equation is very important as it determines the saturation vapour pressure, in practice it is replaced by empirical, typically Magnus-type, equations which are more accurate. It is shown that the reduced accuracy reflects an inconsistent assumption that the latent heat of vaporization is constant. Not only is this…

A simple low-cost experiment for undergraduate students to determine the characteristics of a negative temperature coefficient of resistance thermistor is presented. The experiment measures the resistance-temperature and voltage-temperature characteristics of the thermistor. Results of the resistance-temperature experiment are used to determine…

An alloy is an intimate association of two or more metals, with or without a definite composition, which has metallic properties. Heterogeneous alloys, such as tin-lead (Sn/Pb) solders, consist of a mixture of crystalline phases with different compositions. A homogeneous alloy with a unique composition having the lowest possible melting point is…

Liquid-free cryogenic devices are acquiring importance in basic science and engineering. But they can also lead to improvements in teaching low temperature and solid-state physics to graduate students and specialists. Most of the devices are relatively expensive, but small-sized equipment is slowly becoming available. Here, we have designed…

A method for the construction of a Galilean thermometer out of common chemistry glassware is described. Students in a first-semester physical chemistry (thermodynamics) class can construct the Galilean thermometer as an investigation of the thermal expansivity of liquids and the temperature dependence of density. This is an excellent first…

The literature has revealed that many students encounter substantial difficulties in applying the first law of thermodynamics. For example, university students sometimes fail to recognize that heat and work are independent means of energy transfer. When discussing adiabatic processes for an ideal gas, few students can correctly refer to the…

One-component phase diagrams are good approximations to predict pressure-temperature ("P-T") behavior of a substance in the presence of air, provided air pressure is not much higher than the vapor pressure. However, at any air pressure, and from the conceptual point of view, the use of a traditional "P-T" phase diagram is not strictly correct. In…

A procedure modelling ideal classical and quantum gases is discussed. The proposed approach is mainly based on the idea that modelling and algorithm analysis can provide a deeper understanding of particularly complex physical systems. Appropriate representations and physical models able to mimic possible pseudo-mechanisms of functioning and having…

We present a teaching module dealing with the thermal effects of interaction between radiation and matter, the infrared emission of bodies and the greenhouse effect devoted to university level and teacher education. The module stresses the dependence of the optical properties of materials (transparency, absorptivity and emissivity) on radiation…

A three-dimensional heat transfer model is built according to the rotor structure of an asynchronous motor, and three-dimensional temperature fields of the rotor under different working conditions, such as the unloaded, rated loaded and that with broken rotor bars, are studied based on the finite element numerical method and experiments. The…

The cooling of objects is often described by a law, attributed to Newton, which states that the temperature difference of a cooling body with respect to the surroundings decreases exponentially with time. Such behaviour has been observed for many laboratory experiments, which led to a wide acceptance of this approach. However, the heat transfer…

We apply several physical ideas to determine the steady temperature distribution in a medium moving with uniform velocity between two infinite parallel plates. We compute it in the coordinate frame moving with the medium by integration over the "past" to account for the influence of an infinite set of instantaneous point sources of heat in past…