A recent trend at our university has been an increase in the use of animations, particularly for freshmen classes. We have observed that first-year students are interested in studying general chemistry using animations. We've also experienced an increase in the number of students registering for general chemistry, perhaps because of our use of animations. This presentation will provide two examples of animations used for understanding a thermodynamic definition of entropy. The first example is an animation of a building that explodes into a mash of pieces but then becomes a new building. It is easy for students to understand entropy using this analogy. It helps them recognize that the entropy of the universe can be increasing even though there is a probability of local sites of decrease in entropy.The second example uses an animation of bouncing balls that are initially in disorder but after a certain amount of time become ordered even though the entropy of the system increases during the process.These two animations help students learn general chemistry.

Animations help general chemistry students learn thermodynamics

244th National Meeting (2012)

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