In this lesson, students consider heat transfers that occur in every day situations and investigate three specific ways that heat moves: conduction, convection, and radiation.

In this lesson, students learn how light energy from the sun radiates to the earth and the light energy is transformed to heat. Students also learn about heat transfer: conduction, radiation, and convection.

This lesson demonstrates that the source of energy to run small motors can be the sun or chemical energy stored in a battery.

In this lesson, students discover that heat is conducted through different materials at different rates by performing a simple experiment. They begin to consider how knowledge of heat transfers can be used to safely and efficiently utilize heat transfers in everyday situations.

In this lesson, students investigate the insulating properties of variety of materials. Using their knowledge of heat transfers, students design an insulated water bottle.

In this lesson, students idenitfy sources of unwanted heat transfer within their school and homes and make suggestions as to how these types of transfers can be slowed. Students further investigate how buildings are heated.

Students will work collaboratively to explore absorption and reflection through the construction of a solar water heater.

In this activity, students observe a discrepant event, explore thermal energy and energy transfer, and apply their knowledge of energy transfer to sea ice processes.

Students create a labeled sketch of Earth's interior, read a variety of informational texts and complete a jot chart that will utilize available evidence to describe the Earth's interior layers and explain the role of thermal convection in the movement of Earth's materials. They will then create a model of the Earth's layers and present this model to their classmates, explaining the role of thermal convection in the movement of Earth's materials.

This lesson is designed to exemplify an argumentation approach to practical work, using a predict-observe-explain framework. Students often think that some materials are intrinsically warm (wood, plastic, wool) while others are intrinsically cold (metals, glass, water). This lesson challenges these ideas by presenting observations which many will find counter-intuitive. Through argumentation, students predict the outcome of an experiment, observe the result, and discuss how scientific ideas about energy transfer can explain what they see.

In this activity, students make a reflective solar cooker that will use the Sun's energy to cook marshmallows.

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 6th Grade Science. 

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 6th Grade Science. 

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team and is aligned to the NC Standards for 6th Grade Science.

This STEM Teaching Kit (STK) is designed to help middle grades students with science concepts related to heat and energy as well as teach them the basics of engineering design. They also come away with a sense of how engineers are people who design solutions to problems. The students’ goal is to design and build a shelter for an ice cube-shaped penguin that reduces heat transfer and keeps the ice from melting.

In this video, students learn that heat is a form of energy. Heat is thermal energy that exists in matter. The faster an object's particles move, the more heat it has. Heat can be added to an object by making its particles speed up.

In this project students will research and then build a basic solar cooker shell made out of cardboard. Then they will run a variety of materials through experiments. Data from the experiments will be used to determine which materials should be added to the solar cooker shell to improve its ability to heat up food.

This project was created as a collaboration between a science and an engineering/woodshop class. The engineering class researched and build the basic solar cooker cardboard shells. The science class tested additional materials to add to the shells to improve the solar cookers. Then the engineering class, following the directions from reports created by the science class, added the materials to the solar cooker shells to create the final products.

In this activity, students demonstrate that energy from the sun can be collected and stored in many ways.

In this activity, students estimate the energy output of the Sun (radiation) using a simple device and discover how much power sunlight provides to Earth; they learn that the Sun is the main source of energy on Earth. Students also compare the amount of solar radiation emitted at Mercury as to Earth. They also learn that sunlight and the electromagnetic spectrum are the main tools with which we study objects in the Solar System.