Systematic literature review on the common misconceptions in thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer

Abstract

Student misconceptions are rooted in their experiences from everyday life and unsteady foundations from previous courses. These misconceptions often have a negative impact on students’ conceptual understanding within an engineering subject. The literature includes many articles that identify misconceptions in engineering thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer, and some offer strategies for addressing these misconceptions. However, a recent literature review on the misconceptions that have persisted in these engineering subjects was not found. A systematic literature review on common misconceptions in engineering thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer was conducted for this paper. In total, 32 articles were found within mechanical engineering and engineering education research from the past 20 years that focused on the search criteria for misconceptions in thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer. The search terms used to find articles included: student misconceptions, mistakes, errors, and misunderstandings. The most common misconceptions in thermodynamics were: differentiation among heat, energy, and temperature, entropy, and steady- state vs. equilibrium processes. In fluid mechanics, the common misconceptions included: Bernoulli’s principle, gravitational effects, and fluid statics. The common misconceptions in heat transfer included: differentiation among heat, energy, and temperature, rate vs. amount of transfer, and modes of heat transfer (conduction, convection, radiation). A distinction is made in this literature review between primary and secondary misconceptions, where the secondary misconceptions typically arise from a lack of addressing primary misconceptions. The methods that instructors and researchers used to identify misconceptions were collected and categorized based on assessment type. Similarly, the strategies developed to repair and prevent student misconceptions are presented. With this literature review, a more cohesive view of student misconceptions can be formed, so that instructors may anticipate these misconceptions in their own courses and attempt to remediate them, as well as facilitating a deeper understanding of student misconceptions that may be more generalized to engineering education as a whole.