BERG > NEXUS Project > Development page > Assessing Competencies

Energy conservation applies across all scales.  If it is expressed as the First Law of Thermodynamics, it can be applied to any subset of the universe, as long as we keep track of the interactions causing energy to enter and leave that system.  Rather than looking exclusively at mechanical energy or thermal energy, applying thermodynamic principles to biological systems requires that we consider chemical energy along with these.

Students will be able to:

• Make decisions about bounding a system, deciding what is in and what is out
• Identify interactions (viz. work and heat) that result in energy entering or leaving a system
• Use conservation of energy to reason qualitatively and quantitatively about energy transformations in isolated systems
• Use the First Law to reason qualitatively and quantitatively about energy transformations and transfers in systems interacting with their surroundings
• Understand the First Law of Thermodynamics as an expression of conservation of energy for a particular system
• Recognize that the change in the total energy of the system equals the net input (or output) of energy into the system via work and/or heat
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