Abstract
Thermodynamics belongs to the largest areas in the Czech physics curricula. On every school level this area is conceptually very rich and uses terms that are familiar from everyday life but have different meanings in physics.
Such a language conflict can form or even strengthen students' intuitive incorrect beliefs - misconceptions. This contribution describes a research focused on students' misconceptions in the context of common, everyday thermal phenomena.
In order to identify typical students' misconceptions in this field, the Thermal Concept Evaluation (TCE) test was chosen. Since September 2013, more than 500 secondary school students from 23 classes have filled in this test twice - both as a pretest and as a posttest.
Besides questions regarding thermal phenomena, the test included a few attitudinal questions to learn additional information about the students.