Postgraduate Teaching
Undergraduate Teaching
The Entropy Simulation
The Entropy Simulation simulates the motion of a group of two-dimensional "atoms", modelled as hard discs, bouncing around in a square box. The atoms can be given different radii and masses; the box walls can be adiabatic or isothermal; the box can be made to contract or expand at a range of speeds; and the box can be increased in size suddenly.
The simulation can be used to study many aspects of kinetic theory and thermodynamics including: the ideal and non-ideal gas laws; the law of equipartition; adiabatic and isothermal expansions and compressions, quasistatic and non-quasistatic; how the pressure and area are related during adiabatic and isothermal expansions and compressions; free expansions; the nature of the first law; the behaviour of mixtures of gases; reversibility and the arrow of time; the approach to the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution; the change in the integral of dQ/T as the system is taken around a thermodynamic cycle; Brownian motion; ...
About the only obvious quantity that cannot be calculated directly is the entropy.