Related papers: Faculty survey on upper-division thermal physics c…
We discuss the development, implementation, and assessment of a course for science undergraduates designed to help them develop an awareness and a deeper appreciation of the intellectual demands of physics teaching. The course focused on…
In these decades, it has been revealed that there is rich information-theoretic structure in thermodynamics of out-of-equilibrium systems in both the classical and quantum regimes. This has led to the fruitful interplay among statistical…
The emission of thermal radiation is a physical process of fundamental and technological interest. From different approaches, thermal radiation can be regarded either as one of the basic mechanisms of heat transfer, as a fundamental quantum…
Foundational investigations in quantum mechanics, both experimental and theoretical, gave birth to the field of quantum information science. Nevertheless, the foundations of quantum mechanics themselves remain hotly debated in the…
Although not as wide, and popular, as that of quantum mechanics, the investigation of fundamental aspects of statistical mechanics constitutes an important research field in the building of modern physics. Besides the interest for itself,…
This document consists of lecture notes for a graduate course, which focuses on the relations between Information Theory and Statistical Physics. The course is aimed at EE graduate students in the area of Communications and Information…
In the U.S., introductory calculus-based courses often acts as a gatekeeper to STEM degrees. But access to the prerequisite math is far from equal--students from low-income and racially marginalized communities are far less likely to have…
The thermalization of an isolated quantum system is described by quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, while these two subjects are still not fully consistent with each other. This leaves a less-explored region where both quantum and…
The 2022 Snowmass Community Summer Study consisted of two years of engagement with the particle physics community to craft a US particle physics strategy for the next decade, culminating in the 2022 Snowmass Book. This Report of the Topical…
The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) has been widely used to assess student understanding of introductory mechanics concepts by a variety of educators and physics education researchers. One reason for this extensive use is that many of the…
Separation of variables can be a powerful technique for solving many of the partial differential equations that arise in physics contexts. Upper-division physics students encounter this technique in multiple topical areas including…
Feature requests are proposed by users to request new features or enhancements of existing features of software products, which represent users' wishes and demands. Satisfying users' demands can benefit the product from both competitiveness…
A general problem of optimal information acquisition for its use in decision making problems is considered. This motivates the need for developing quantitative measures of information sources' capabilities for supplying accurate information…
We report on several specific student difficulties regarding the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the context of heat engines within upper-division undergraduates thermal physics courses. Data come from ungraded written surveys, graded…
Uncertainty is an important and fundamental concept in physics education. Students are often first exposed to uncertainty in introductory labs, expand their knowledge across lab courses, and then are introduced to quantum mechanical…
A classification of the tasks of human thermoregulation is proposed, which allows combining various scientific studies into one system, which takes into account environmental factors, biological feedback in the body and different properties…
Interdisciplinary introduction to quantum information science (QIS) courses are proliferating at universities across the US, but the experiences of instructors in these courses have remained largely unexplored in the discipline-based…
We study the informational underpinnings of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, using an abstract framework, general probabilistic theories, capable of describing arbitrary physical theories. This allows one to abstract the…
What is the major difference between large and small systems? At small length-scales the dynamics is dominated by fluctuations, whereas at large scales fluctuations are irrelevant. Therefore, any thermodynamically consistent description of…
Thermodynamics is based on a coarse-grained approach, from which its fundamental variables emerge, effectively erasing the complicate details of the microscopic dynamics within a macroscopic system. The strength of Thermodynamics lies in…