Different Senses of Entropy—Implications for Education

Entropy

Jesper Haglund¹  Fredrik Jeppsson² 

[1]Swedish National Graduate School in Science and Technology Education, Linköping University, S-601 74 Norrköping, Sweden

关键词: science education;    thermodynamics;    entropy;    semantics;    cognitive linguistics;    polysemy;   

DOI  :  10.3390/e12030490

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

A challenge in the teaching of entropy is that the word has several different senses, which may provide an obstacle for communication. This study identifies five distinct senses of the word ‘entropy’, using the Principled Polysemy approach from the field of linguistics. A semantic network is developed of how the senses are related, using text excerpts from dictionaries, text books and text corpora. Educational challenges such as the existence of several formal senses of entropy and the intermediary position of entropy as disorder along the formal/non-formal scale are presented using a two-Dimensional Semiotic/semantic Analysing Schema (2-D SAS).

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2010 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.