Explore these tutorials to help teach post-16 students about key topics and questions relating to thermodynamics

Thermodynamics is essential to developing your students’ understanding of physical and chemical change. However, post-16 chemical thermodynamics has often been taught with an emphasis on energetics and enthalpy, which can prove particularly challenging for students.

The tutorials in this series approach thermodynamics from an alternative, more fundamental idea: the chance behaviour of particles and energy. Featuring videos and animations, each tutorial is designed to engage your students with a particular topic, including:

  • Direction and reversibility in chemical reactions
  • Entropy and the second law of thermodynamics
  • Equilibrium, the Gibbs free energy and Ellingham diagrams

Use the tutorials to provide your students with a robust and logical foundation for learning about thermodynamics, starting with the concept of entropy and exploring how chance and randomness lead to the entirely predictable outcomes of chemical reactions.

Additional information

This resource was originally published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2015 as part of the Quantum Casino website, with support from Reckitt Benckiser.

Post-16 thermodynamics tutorials