Instructor Interview
Below, Dr. Peter Godart describes various aspects of how he taught the MITES course Thermodynamics and Climate Change in the summer of 2020.
OCW: What approach did you take in developing the online textbook for this course?
Peter Godart: This course was motivated by what I perceived was a lack of engineering curricula that address the broader societal, ecological, and ethical impacts of real-world applications of the materials being presented in an integrated fashion. Thermodynamics in particular is often taught using examples of turbomachinery—steam engines, natural gas turbines, etc.—but without acknowledging the role these devices have played in global warming and ecological destruction. The goal of this course and accompanying text was to build up an understanding of thermodynamics from first principles, where possible using examples from nature, and then show how these principles have historically been major drivers of climate change. I then wanted to take this a step further and show how these same principles can be used now to solve these problems with the hope of inspiring students to 1) want to take on the biggest challenges of our generation and 2) bring a broader point of view into their future careers as engineers, scientists, policy makers, etc. and constantly question the downstream impact of their work.
OCW: How can familiarity with the basic concepts of thermodynamics help students to be more informed citizens when it comes to issues like climate change?
Peter Godart: Climate change is a complex issue that requires system-level solutions outside the direct control of any given individual, or even any individual corporation or government. That said, it is important to develop a technologically literate and conscientious culture within the corporations and government agencies that can significantly influence this issue. A basic understanding of the first two laws of thermodynamics can help individuals within these organizations more efficiently deploy resources into the most promising solutions, for example. It can also help us identify greenwashing and other misinformation practices that enable bad actors to escape accountability.
When ice melts into liquid water, that phase change entails absorption of latent heat. (Photo courtesy of David Stanley on Flickr. License: CC BY.)
OCW: Tell us about the role of programming in the course—how the course used coding-based labs to study real-world physical phenomena. Did you find that students came to the course with the skills they needed to implement those simulations? What did they get out of the experience of modeling phenomena this way?
Peter Godart: Programming is part of the modern toolbox for all engineering disciplines at the application level, so it is important to familiarize students with these tools as early in their coursework as possible. Practical thermodynamics requires information on how different substances store and transfer energy as a function of temperature, pressure, phase, etc. This information is gathered via experiments and then modeled as complex equations that quickly become unwieldy to manipulate by hand. By bringing in Python libraries that abstract away these different material properties, students can focus on the fundamental principles and actually model real-world systems. In this course, we use this approach to answer interesting questions like “How much land area would be required to replace all fossil fuels with lawn grass?” or “How much energy is required each year to sequester all anthropogenic CO2 emissions via direct air capture?” (Hint for both: a lot!) The goal of the programming portion of this course is to give students the tools to pose their own questions and quickly answer and communicate their solutions with a reasonably high level of accuracy—a critical skill set for technologists across a wide range of engineering disciplines.
OCW: Do you have any suggestions of ways high-school curricula could be adjusted to better prepare students for college-level science?
Peter Godart: Because thermodynamics underlies many subjects, including many that are already taught in high school, I believe its own dedicated course is merited. At the very least, it should be more deeply integrated into chemistry and physics topics. Additionally, more STEM courses should include programming labs, as compute and educational resources continue to become more accessible.
Curriculum Information
Prerequisites
Prerequisites for the course include single variable calculus, a course in either chemistry or physics, and familiarity with the Python programming language, though many students were able to fill gaps in their background knowledge within the first two weeks of the course.
Requirements Satisfied
Students in the MITES summer program take one physics course in addition to courses in life science, calculus, humanities, and engineering. Introduction to Oscillations and Waves is one of the courses that meet the program’s physics requirement.
Offered
Occasionally
Assessment
There are no formal grades in the MITES summer program, but students do receive numerical grades on their assignments so that they and the instructors can track their progress.
Student Information
Thermodynamics and Climate Change was taught for several years through MITES Semester (formerly MOSTEC), offered by MIT’s Office of Engineering Outreach Programs. This summer program is for highly motivated rising 12th grade students from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds.
How Student Time Was Spent
During an average week, students were expected to spend 12 hours on the course, roughly divided as follows:
Lectures
- Met twice per week for 2 hours per session; 12 sessions total; mandatory attendance.
Out of Class
- Outside of class, students completed weekly problem sets on fundamental topics, as well as interactive coding assignments to simulate and analyze various thermodynamic systems. As a final group project, each student picked one of these systems and provided an in-depth analysis and simulation to better understand its potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
