Understanding of Elementary Concepts in Heat and Temperature among College Students and K-12 Teachers

Ideas associated with heat and temperature are widely known to cause difficulties for students. This may be due to the use of these terms in colloquial speech and also to students' interpretations of everyday experiences. We report here the results of an investigation on student understanding of selected topics in heat and temperature, particularly thermal equilibrium, giving evidence for a number of misconceptions about heat and temperature and the relationships between specific heat, heat capacity, and heat transfer. The study subjects represented diverse groups with widely varying backgrounds in chemistry and physics. They included pre- and in-service teachers, and lower- and upper-division science majors and nonmajors.