Study Guide for First Midterm Exam
Tier III 415A - R. D. Piccard

Examination Format

The examination will be structured with multiple-choice, short-essay, and matching sections. Given my experience with previous classes, I am confident that you will have plenty of time to think and plenty of time to write.

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Links to On-line Resources

These include the lecture notes for several of the book reviews and physics lectures.

1. Timeline of Historical Events and People

2. Huwe and Piccard's Notes on Entropy and Human Activity -- only through the section titled "Original Definition."

3. Rawls' Theory of Justice.

4. Daly's Steady-State Economics

5. Remarks that are related to the history presentations

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Topics

The topic outline is easy to extract from the "Tentative Schedule" section at the end of the course syllabus.

The "sneak-preview" lectures on radioactivity are not part of the material that will be included on the first examination. That is why the previous section did not include a link to the on-line radiation notes. They will be included on the second examination and the final.

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Terms and Acronyms

This list is incomplete. It also includes some terms that we did not talk about.

1. chemical reaction

2. combustion

3. conservation of energy

4. conservation of momentum

5. diffraction

6. diffusion

7. external costs

8. gravitational

9. heat engine

10. heat pump

11. infrared

12. internal costs

13. kinetic

14. ozone

15. phase change

16. refrigerator

17. reversible

18. ultraviolet

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Definitions and Concepts

These definitions and concepts by no means exhaust the material we have covered. They do include some we have not done in class.

1. A chemically reactive form of oxygen whose molecules contain three oxygen atoms, instead of the usual two.

2. A form of energy associated with mass raised to high altitudes.

3. A form of energy associated with mass in motion.

4. A machine that takes in energy in the form of heat, transforms some of that heat to mechanical work, and expels the rest of the heat.

5. A machine that uses mechanical work to remove heat from a cold place and force even more heat into a warm place.

6. A machine that uses mechanical work to remove heat from a cold place, expelling that heat and more into the surrounding environment.

7. A process, such as burning, in which a solid fuel is transformed into gaseous smoke.

8. A process, such as melting, in which the physical state of a sample is altered without any change in its chemical composition.

9. A process that does not change the entropy of the closed, isolated system.

10. Light whose photons have so little energy that they cannot start the chemical reactions in your retina, and therefore cannot be seen.

11. Light whose photons carry so much energy that they are absorbed in the cornea, lens, or liquid interior of the eyeball, never reaching the retina, and therefore cannot be seen.

12. The consequences of a business process that are paid for by the people involved.

13. The consequences of a business process that do not show up in the bookkeeping.

14. The principle that energy can be changed from one form to another, but neither created nor destroyed.

15. The principle that a moving object tends to continue to move at the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an external force.

16. The process by which the different wavelengths of light are spread out when they reflect from a surface covered with uniformly spaced grooves.

17. The process by which a group of molecules in a fluid spread out, through random microscopic motions, from an initial location of high concentration, until they are uniformly distributed throughout the volume of the fluid.

Dick Piccard revised this file (http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~piccard/entropy/study1.htm)on February 2, 2005.

Please E-Mail comments or suggestions to "piccard@ohio.edu".