Essential idea: Thermal physics deftly demonstrates the links between the macroscopic measurements essential to many scientific models with the microscopic properties that underlie these models.
Nature of science: Evidence through experimentation: Scientists from the 17th and 18th centuries were working without the knowledge of atomic structure and sometimes developed theories that were later found to be incorrect, such as phlogiston and perpetual motion capabilities. Our current understanding relies on statistical mechanics providing a basis for our use and understanding of energy transfer in science.
Understandings: Molecular theory of solids, liquids and gases, Internal energy
Applications and skills: Describing temperature change in terms of internal energy,
Guidance: Internal energy is taken to be the total intermolecular potential energy + the total random kinetic energy of the molecules
Data booklet equations: None
Particles and moles: Part 1
Particles and moles: Part 2
The definition of the mole changed in 2018. The new definition abandons any connect to Carbon-12 and, instead, sets the mole, the Avogadro number to a set value. The new definition is exactly 6.02214076×1023 particles.
Oxford Physics (2014): This book takes a different route, but Brownian motion is on page 106. Internal energy is discussed on page 95 and Moles are on page
Hamper HL (2014): pages 93 - 101
Hamper SL (2014): pages 93 - 101
Moles and Avogadro's constant: pages 142 - 144, States of matter: pages 151 - 153