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Register a new userNegative Energy: Why Interdisciplinary Physics Requires Multiple Ontologies
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Much recent work in physics education research has focused on ontological metaphors for energy, particularly the substance ontology and its pedagogical affordances. The concept of negative energy problematizes the substance ontology for energy, but in many instructional settings, the specific difficulties around negative energy are outweighed by the general advantages of the substance ontology. However, we claim that our interdisciplinary setting (a physics class that builds deep connections to biology and chemistry) leads to a different set of considerations and conclusions. In a course designed to draw interdisciplinary connections, the centrality of chemical bond energy in biology necessitates foregrounding negative energy from the beginning. We argue that the emphasis on negative energy requires a combination of substance and location ontologies. The location ontology enables energies both above and below zero. We present preliminary student data that illustrate difficulties in reasoning about negative energy, and the affordances of the location metaphor.
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Teaching about energy in interdisciplinary settings that emphasize coherence among physics, chemistry, and biology leads to a more central role for chemical bond energy. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach to chemical energy leads to modeling chemical bonds in terms of negative energy. While recent work on ontological metaphors for energy has emphasized the affordances of the substance ontology, this ontology is problematic in the context of negative energy. Instead, we apply a dynamic ontologies perspective to argue that blending the substance and location ontologies for energy can be effective in reasoning about negative energy in the context of reasoning about chemical bonds. We present data from an introductory physics for the life sciences (IPLS) course in which both experts and students successfully use this blended ontology. Blending these ontologies is most successful when the substance and location ontologies are combined such that each is strategically utilized in reasoning about particular aspects of energetic processes.
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