Gli studenti e l’energia

An open questionnaire on various aspects of energy, including phenomena involving heat, was administred to 6 classes of Italian 15 to 18 year-old students having different curricular exprerience in physics, attending different upper secondary schools. In this paper we discuss the answers in depth against the well known conceptual difficulties of energy, we compare them against the students’ curricular backgrounds an we draw conclusions about the respective strengths and weaknesses of the underlyng curricular choices.