Investigating graduate student reasoning on a conceptual entropy questionnaire

Abstract

Student learning in upper division thermal physics has not been studied to the same extent as in other courses like electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. Studies addressing reasoning and learning at the graduate level are even more limited. In this study, we conducted think-aloud interviews with eight graduate students involving questions centered around a set of entropy related conceptual tasks, two of which are similar to tasks presented to undergraduates in other studies. We discuss patterns in student reasoning on each question then discuss themes that appeared across questions. We identify conceptual resources that students frequently used to reason about the interview tasks and compare them to prior work. We observed graduate students commonly thinking about entropy in relationship to a number of states, even in situations where such a connection was not directly relevant. Graduate students also frequently made direct associations between entropy and temperature, despite there being no general, explicit relationship between the two quantities. On the whole, graduate students demonstrated adaptability and metacognitive awareness in their approach to reasoning about entropy.