Nature of heat inventory: Assessing students’ understanding of thermal processes in kinetic molecular terms

The present study describes the development and field testing of the (NOHI) that examines high school and undergraduate students’ understanding of heat transfer processes in the terms of kinetic molecular theory. NOHI comprises 10 items. Based on preliminary study and the history of science, the 30 distractors of NOHI were designed to reflect the following three categories of possible misconceptions regarding heat: (a) , (b) , and (c) . Field testing, carried out on 81 students for science teaching, showed the materialistic misconceptions of heat still to be the most popular. NOHI has been proven to be a valid and reliable tool that could be used to determine students’ thinking regarding classical heat processes.