Desarrollo de una simulación computacional e interfaz gráfica de usuario del experimento mental el Demonio de Maxwell

Abstract

Scientific and technological literacy establishes criteria for the use and adaptation of communication and information technologies (ICT) in the field of education. A computational resource was developed for thermodynamics, which implies a kind of complexity of the learning processes due to high abstraction that requires its study, particularly with the microscopic phenomena that are analyzed through a classic way on a macroscopic scale. The second law was chosen as an object of study since from it the other principles can be unfolded from a conceptual point of view. The resource was designed to explain and illustrate the paradox "Maxwell's Demon" (posed by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in the year 1867 to enunciate a possible violation in the second law of thermodynamics), which includes a computational simulation with graphical user interface (GUI), based on the C ++ programming language and the Cern's ROOT modular scientific software toolkit. It is a software named Maxwell'sDemon oriented as a tool for teachers and researchers in order to facilitate the teaching and understanding of thermodynamics in the classroom. In addition, it is supported by a user manual that allows the teacher trained in science to use multimedia to improve education and propose new future activities in this field.