Students consider whether the thermo surfaces reflect the properties of an ideal gas.

Students consider the change in internal energy during three different processes involving a container of water vapor on a stove. Using the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, students reason about how the internal energy would change and then compare this prediction with data from NIST presented as a contour plot.

In this activity, students will explore how to calculate a derivative from measured data. Students should have prior exposure to differential calculus. At the start of the activity, orient the students to the contour plot - it's busy.

Students consider how changing the volume of a system changes the internal energy of the system. Students use plastic graph models to explore these functions.

In this introduction to heat capacity, students determine a derivative that indicates how much the internal energy changes as the temperature changes when volume is held constant.

Students calculate two different (thermodynamic) partial derivatives of the form \(\left(\frac{\partial A}{\partial B}\right)_C\) from information given on the same contour map.