Bringing Ternary Energy Diagrams into the Mainstream

• Autores: Bob Brazzle, Noah Bodine, Evan Roach, Selena Ensalaco
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 62, Nº. 4, 2024, págs. 280-283
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • A ternary energy diagram is a powerful tool for computational physics, used to model systems with energy distributed among three or more forms. A single graph can be packed with thousands of individual data points, and can thus uniquely show a system’s changing energy distribution at the finest intervals of time or position, as well as its large-scale evolution. However, students won’t be able to fully realize the diagram’s value as an analysis tool unless it starts gaining more widespread use. In this article, we discuss modeling a system’s evolving energy distribution using ternary energy diagrams within computational simulations (spreadsheets and animations); we use the context of three physical scenarios and four readily available software tools: Excel, VPython (we use the GlowScript IDE), Desmos, and Jupyter Notebook. All of our simulations are available in the online appendix.