Abstract

Statistical Physics is an intermediate course (1) for engineering physics students at Tecnologico de Monterrey. Previous to this course the students have taken a traditional lecture-based introductory course of thermal physics, with no tutorials, and a thermodynamics course focused on engineering processes and not necessarily in physics concepts. In order to review at the beginning of the course some important required concepts, such as the behavior of an ideal gas and the First Law of Thermodynamics, we have applied two tutorials designed by the PER Group of University of Washington (2). In this practice, the students have taken the pre and post tests recommended by the authors, have worked in the tutorial assisted by prepared instructors and in problem solving sessions in cooperative groups. In this work we will present the analysis of the results of this implementation, as well as the comparison with previous results reported by the authors of these particular tutorials (3, 4). Abstract Footnotes: (1) F. Mandl, Statistical Physics, Wiley (1988) (2) McDermott, L. C., Shaffer, P. S., & PER. Tutorials in Introductory Physics, Prentice Hall, 2001. (3) C. H. Kautz, P. R. L. Heron, M. E. Loverude and L. C. McDermott, Student understanding of the ideal gas law, Part I: A macroscopic perspective, Am. J. Phys. 73, 1005 (2005). (4) M. E. Loverude, C. H. Kautz and P. R. L. Heron, Student understanding of the first law of thermodynamics: Relating work to the adiabatic compression of an ideal gas, Am. J. Phys. 70, 137 (2002).