Introducing the idea of entropy to the ontological category shift theory for conceptual change: The case of heat and sound

Abstract

In the present theoretical study, we introduce the entropy concept into Chi’s ontological shift theory. Chi distinguishes between two categories of process phenomena, direct and emergent, and claims that incorrectly considering emergent processes as direct ones is one of the sources of students’ robust scientific misconceptions. The present study aims to address the needs of high school and undergraduate physics, chemistry, and engineering students being already familiar with the basics of mechanics and the kinetic molecular theory. Acknowledging the contribution of the ontological shift category theory to improving the learning of science, the present paper aims at taking this theory one step further. We argue that more information about scientific phenomena could be gained if we view direct and emergent phenomena as edges of the same scale level of emergency. We show that entropy can be used to evaluate the level of emergency of physical processes. We believe that interpreting scientific phenomena in terms of level of emergency and entropy might promote students’ understanding about the underlying mechanisms explaining these phenomena, as well as about the concept of entropy itself. We provide two pedagogical examples of teaching heat and sound using the level of emergency scale and the entropy concept. We demonstrate analytically in these terms: (a) the development of the heat flow rate equation; and (b) the adiabatic nature of the sound propagation process.