Don't lift another finger, this physical and environmental science unit has everything you need to begin teaching your class about energy. Starting with a look at the greenhouse effect, these lessons and activities take young scientists...

Study heat transfer with activities that focus on how heat energy works. Using a solar cooker, ice cubes, and heat transfer bracelets, kids experiment and record what they find by keeping ice cubes cold and vegetables hot.

During a unit on density, pupils ponder whether or not temperature affects this property. By carefully inserting blue cold water and yellow hot water into a room-temperature sample, they will see the answer. Make sure to have done the...

Don't be so dense! Using food coloring, pupils conduct two experiments with the difference in densities of hot and cold water. In the first experiment, learners add dyed hot and cold water into room temperature water and observe how the...

Scholars collect data from heating sand and water before forming testable hypotheses about why sand heats up faster. Afterward, they develop and run experiments to test their hypotheses.

Global warming is leaving coral reefs in hot water. What does that mean for their survival? Find out as scholars use authentic satellite data to explore the issue. Learners look for global trends in the data and research the effects the...

Turn up the heat with these lesson plans! Class members have a chance to model molecules in different states of matter, observe demonstrations of different types of heat transfer, and perform an activity exploring heat transfer in lab...

Don't melt away! Pairs investigate different insulation materials to determine which one is better than the others. Using a low-temp heat plate, the teams insulate an ice cube from the heat source with a variety of substances. They...

Careful, that light bulb is hot! Compare heat and light energy using a simple light bulb. The exercise addresses energy conservation and presents actual calculations to determine the most cost-effective light bulb.

Learn about conduction, convection, and radiation with an illustrative presentation. It includes slides about atmospheric movement and how it affects the climate, solar radiation, and how latent heat can form storms. 

Heat-sensitive liquid crystal sheets are available in a variety of sizes and temperature ranges. Purchase a class set of hand-held sheets and color half of each with a silver permanent marking pen. Learners of light can hold them under a...

The laws of thermodynamics raise the temperature in your classroom when physics pupils complete this worksheet! They demonstrate their understanding by calculating specific heat capacity, final temperature, amount of work done, and more....

This worksheet would make a nifty quiz on the laws of thermodynamics. Nine multiple choice questions assess high schoolers' understanding of energy transfer, specific heat capacity, phase change, fusion, and vaporization. It is short but...

Students examine sea surface temperatures to see how hurricanes get heat from the oceans surface.  In this hurricanes lesson plan students use the Internet to find data and make line plots. 

Earth science super stars visit the National Earth Science Teachers Association's interactive website to glean information on the layers of the atmosphere. Data tables are provided for them to record what is collected. This assignment...

Pupils record temperatures at different locations around campus. They examine the results and draw conclusions about how materials and colors affect the amount of heat produced. They also analyze Los Angeles' temperature records over a...

Clever! Use a clip from the 1997 film, Volcano, to get your chemistry class knee-deep in heat concepts related to lava. In the movie scene, lava flow is stopped in the nick of time. Your class must use calculations to determine if this...

Two versions of this handout are provided, the second with more detailed information on the same topics. Chemistry aces survey chemical reactions, heat energy transferred, and the action of enzymes by reading this resource. You can...

Second graders investigate how to help a city building remain cooler on the inside. They create a rooftop garden in order to shield the building and lower the internal temperature. The garden is meant to replace the black tar paper that...

This simple activity is ideal for upper elementary learners when studying physical science. Using their sense of touch to describe how hot something feels, and then comparing their observations to thermometer measurements, they discover...

Elementary school physical scientists explore kinetic mechanical energy by dropping a golf ball on different surfaces. They discuss how human made materials might react to light differently from nature made materials. This lesson plan...

In this phase changes learning exercise, students use the specific heats for different substances to determine how much heat is needed for those substance to change phases. This learning exercise has 9 problems to solve.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! Even high schoolers enjoy making ice cream. This laboratory exercise has them record the temperature changes throughout the process of liquid becoming solid, graph the results, and...

Questions that can be used in a lesson on Earth's radiation balance are suggested in this resource. It is not a lesson plan, per se, but it is a list of questions for stations within a "Gallery Walk" lesson. The link to how Gallery Walks...