Curated OER
Transfer of Thermal Energy
Students define temperature and heat, distinguish between temperature and heat flow, calculate amount of heat energy released or absorbed in chemical process, and design procedure, through experimentation, to gather and evaluate data to...
Curated OER
Endothermic and Exothermic Lab
In this endothermic and exothermic reactions activity, students experiment with water and a salt of choice to determine if heat is absorbed or released in the reaction. Students take the temperature of their solution over a 2 minute time...
Curated OER
Soapy Solids
Students observe and explain how a change in temperature causes a physical change in a substance. In this physical science lesson, students use a soap making kit to observe the effects of adding heat to the bar soap as they...
Curated OER
My Car Has Potential
Seventh graders investigate how changes in the mass or height of a ramp can affect the change in potential energy. They discuss the concepts of work and energy, then using the four question strategy, they design an experiment that...
Curated OER
Seasons
Young scholars investigate the reason for seasons on Earth during three activities. They construct a model of the Earth and Sun to identify patterns in the changes of the angle of light on the Earth's surface. Then they conduct a heat...
Curated OER
Energy in the Form of Calories
Young scholars calculate the amount of food calories found in an individual peanut. In small groups, they set up the experiment so that a burning peanut will heat water above it. Using the temperature change and volume of the water they...
It's About Time
Volcanos and the Atmosphere
In the summer of 1815, snow fell every month in New England. Was this related to the volcanic eruption of Tambora in Indonesia earlier in the year? Young scientists design their own experiments to research the long-term effect a volcanic...
Teach Engineering
Weather Basics
Weather — there's more to it than meets the eye of the storm. With this resource young meteorologists learn about the basics of weather, including information about the factors that influence the weather, common weather vocabulary,...
Rice University
College Physics for AP® Courses
Take a look at an organized physics course. The 34-section electronic textbook covers material in AP® Physics 1 and 2. Teachers use the text to supplement lectures and have the class work through the labs. Each section contains...
Curated OER
Earth's Energy Balance Performance Standard
Students examine how Earth-Sun relationships affect Earth's energy balance and the pattern of world temperatures. Students study a Surface Temperature Regions map and write a paragraph describing the temperature pattern from the Equator...
Curated OER
Energy from Hydrocarbons
In this energy from hydrocarbons worksheet, students read about endothermic and exothermic reactions and how hydrocarbons release heat as fuels. Students read how to measure heat changes in reactions and practice finding the specific...
Curated OER
Rising Water!
Students observe water change from a liquid to a gas state when heated and then return to its liquid stage when cooled. They learn that gas molecules move faster than liquid molecules. They discover physical properties that describe how...
Curated OER
STATES OF WATER
Students identify the various states of water. They use hypothesizing and hands-on experimenting on changing the states of water, the properties of water, and the role of heating and cooling in the changes of state.
Curated OER
Convection Activities
Students conduct a series of hands-on activities to demonstrate that heated air expands and that warm air rises because it is less dense.
Curated OER
Thermal Expansion
Students examine how thermal expansion of water can affect sea level. They conduct an experiment that demonstrates what happens to water levels when exposed to heat, record the results on a data sheet, and discuss the results.
Curated OER
Hot Cans and Cold Cans
Students investigate the physics of heating and cooling through conduction, convection, and radiation. Working in groups, they determine the best way to cool a can of water and warm a can of water. Temperature is taken at five minute...
Curated OER
Speeding up the Fizz
Students investigate temperature and chemical reactions. They explore the effect of temperature and particle size has on the rate of a simple chemical reaction. In addition, they graph their results and answer assessment questions.
Curated OER
What The Peanuts Say: Catabolism and Calories
High schoolers investigate the energy released by a peanut and a piece of a walnut. For this catabolism and calories lesson plan, students burn a peanut and a piece of a walnut and measure the temperature of the water before burning and...
Curated OER
Climate And the Greenhouse Effect
Students demonstrate the greenhouse effect. They recognize that relatively small changes to our environment can stimulate significant climate changes. They determine that the "scientific method" is a process of testing hypotheses and...
Curated OER
Water the Universal Solvent
In this water and solvent worksheet, students answer 20 questions about solutes, solvents, polarity in molecules, and the characteristics of water as a solvent. Students answer 3 questions about the lab they completed using temperature...
Curated OER
The Role of Density in Sinking or Floating: Relational Causality
Students watch the teacher do a demonstration of density with diet and regular soda. Note: try this first, as different types of artificial sweetener have different densities. Students discuss density and volume. They discuss "Relational...
Curated OER
Everything about Equations
For this chemical reactions worksheet, students are given fifteen unbalanced equations and they must identify the reaction types, the phases of the products, the signs that a chemical change occurred and the sum of the coefficients of...
Curated OER
Scientist Tracking Network
Students correlate surface radiation with mean surface temperature of several geographic regions. They observe how these parameters change with latitude and construct an understanding of the relationship of solar radiation to seasonal...
Curated OER
A Matter of State
Middle schoolers conduct science experiments to understand that particle movement changes as a substance changes from one phase to another phase. Students record observations of experiments that involve the three states of matter:...