Day 31: Heat Engines

Today in AP Physics 2, I introduced heat engines. While perhaps not an huge part of the new curriculum, heat engines nicely connected everything that we’ve been studying so far in the thermodynamics unit and set the stage for our investigation of entropy next week. I also think it is fantastic for students to leave with a basic understanding of how an internal combustion engine works since very few students understand this in my class. This slow-motion video of a couple of cycles of an internal combustion engine is fantastic!

  ##thermo  

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