ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEMS AND WAYS TO IMPROVE THE TEACHING OF THE TOPIC «ENTROPY» IN A TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

The increasing requirements for the level of training of engineers, the expansion of the number of necessary competencies that graduates of technical universities should possess, pose the task of finding new approaches to teaching that provide deep professional knowledge, skills and abilities, and, at the same time, broad erudition, a confident understanding of the physical picture of the world. The article discusses the methodology of studying the topic «Entropy» and the related second law of thermodynamics. Both entropy and the second law of thermodynamics are considered as basic, fundamental concepts of the general course of physics. In the proposed methodology, along with the principle of «from simple to complex», the principle of «repetition» is implemented – repeated return to the concept of entropy in different parts of the general physics course: in addition to the standard study of entropy in thermodynamics, examples of entropy calculation in electrodynamics, nuclear and atomic physics, in solid state physics are given. The statistical and thermodynamic meaning of entropy is analyzed in detail, their interrelation within the framework of mathematical transformations of complexity acceptable to first-year students is shown, an example of working with very large numbers is considered. Entropy and potential energy are compared, their similarities and differences are noted. In particular, both of these physical quantities determine the equilibrium state of the system by the extremum of their values. The Carnot cycle is considered not only in the «pressure – volume» coordinates, but also in the «temperature – entropy» coordinates, which allows us to obtain the efficiency of the cycle literally «in one action». At the same time, it is not necessary to resort to the characteristics of a specific working fluid of a heat engine, which reflects one of the most important discoveries of Carnot, which is that the efficiency of an ideal heat engine does not depend on the nature of the working fluid. In the final paragraphs of the article, in which the entropy of the Fermi gas and the RC circuit is considered, a number of physical aspects related to the calculation of entropy and its change in irreversible relaxation processes are analyzed in detail, including the concept of entropy as a function of state. It is assumed that the article will be useful to teachers and students of technical universities, will help to better understand the concept of entropy, which is one of the most difficult concepts in the study of physics in the first years of universities.

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