BERG > NEXUS Project > Development page > Assessing Competencies

Basic Principles of Energy  

Students will be able to:

• Recognize that energy (and entropy, etc.) are concepts that unify physics, biology, and chemistry, and the same basic physical principles can be applied in all three disciplines
• Analyze physical systems in terms of energy, identifying the relevant forms of energy
• Understand chemical energy as electric potential energy (with some kinetic energy thrown in) 
• Describe chemical energy in terms of PE vs r diagrams  
• Understand thermal energy as kinetic energy of molecules 
• Use the Work-Energy Theorem to relate energy to forces
• Go back and forth between representations of potential energy and the corresponding forces
• Go back and forth between microscopic and macroscopic descriptions of forms of energy (e.g. understanding thermal energy as kinetic energy of molecules, and chemical energy in terms of electrical interactions)
• Identify energy transformations within a system
• Track energy into/out of a system to make sense of energy conservation