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: Phase change; latent heat
Application and skills: Applying the calorimetric techniques of specific latent heat experimentally; Describing phase change in terms of molecular behaviour; Sketching and interpreting phase change diagrams; calculating energy changes involving specific latent heat of fusion and vaporisation.
Guidance: Phase change graphs may have axes of temperature vs time or temperature vs energy
Data booklet equations: Q = mL
What is specific latent heat?
Questions about specific latent heat
Oxford Physics (2014): pages 97 - 99
Hamper HL (2014): pages 107 - 111
Hamper SL (2014): pages 107 - 111
pages 154 - 162