Interpretative perspectives of thermal phenomena and the role of RTL exploration in 16 year old students

In this paper we present a study aimed at identifying the interpretative perspectives and possible elements for the conceptual change in the interpretation of thermal phenomena of 16 year old students. There is an extensive research literature in physics education, highlighting persistent inconsistencies in interpretive ideas about thermal phenomena at all age levels. Common sense ideas, calorimetric interpretations are intertwined with the thermodynamic view based on states and processes. This seems mainly due to the fact that in school curricula, the concepts of thermal equilibrium, temperature, internal energy and thermal properties of materials are often addressed with a thermostatic and calorimetric approach poorly connected to the thermodynamic view of phenomena. With sensors in RTL mode that highlight thermal states and processes, we proposed the experimental exploration of some thermal phenomena to 64 students from 3 upper secondary school classes who had studied thermal phenomena with a calorimetric approach in order to understand the ways in which the desired conceptual change towards a thermodynamic reading could be promoted. The results of a qualitative analysis of the interpretations show us that an RTL approach is suitable for constructing the concept of temperature as a state property, an interpretative pivot of thermal interaction phenomena. Even in thermometric conduction processes this is an important basis, although a more in-depth interpretation in terms of energy seems to be necessary.