Energy is a concept in chemistry that reoccurs consistently throughout the curriculum. A student's failure to understand this concept may be manifested by seemingly unrelated errors in various applications of the concept. In order to assess students understanding of energy concepts it is important to be aware of common student misconceptions about energy and related topics. In this study, misconceptions were investigated with the aid of Ed's Tool - a web-based program that facilitates efficient collection, coding and analysis of responses to essay questions. It also allows iterative rounds of coding, actual grading, and tracking of student's participation.

The selected respondents were first year students enrolled in a general chemistry course at Clemson University. They were asked to answer five open-ended questions about energy that were posted on Ed's Tools web page. To elicit all possible answers from students, the questions were classified as either specific or general questions. The students' answers were then coded, based on their understanding of energy concepts.

The coded misconceptions are presented in this study and will be further used for constructing energy concept inventory.