Exploring Heat Exchanges with the Calorimetry Simulator -- SimuF\'isica

TL;DR

The paper introduces Calorimetry - SimuFísica, an interactive simulator for teaching heat exchange, demonstrating its effectiveness through educational examples that align simulation results with theoretical calculations.

Contribution

It presents a novel interactive tool for teaching heat exchange phenomena, integrating physics equations with dynamic visualization to enhance learning.

Findings

Simulation results align with theoretical calculations

The tool demonstrates pedagogical effectiveness

Supports high school and undergraduate education

Abstract

This article presents the Calorimetry - SimuF\'isica simulator, an interactive computational tool designed for teaching heat exchange processes. The simulator enables dynamic and audiovisual exploration of phenomena such as the heating of liquids and the establishment of thermal equilibrium between bodies at different temperatures. We describe its interface and the underlying physics, based on the equations of specific heat, latent heat of vaporization, and Newton's law of cooling. Two educational application examples are analyzed, in which the simulation results are compared with calculations typically performed at the high school and early undergraduate levels, highlighting the consistency between theory and simulation and the pedagogical potential of the tool.