STTIS: Energy

Science Teacher Training in an Information Society
Teaching about energy

Workshop 1

Contents

Section B Learning about the innovation

Activity B5 Insulation

Page 1 of 8

1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8

Aims

To provide practical experience in looking at the effect of insulation.
To use the idea of energy flows due to temperature differences to explain the phenomena.
To relate the ideas of energy flow and insulation to more familiar everyday examples, supported by the use of abstract pictures.

Background

Pupils have little difficulty in believing that insulation will help to keep hot things hot. However, they may find it more difficult to see that it can help to keep cold things cold. Particularly puzzling may be that it does not affect something which is at room temperature. These practical activities explore these ideas.

The practical activity is followed by an activity in which pupils match situations involving insulation with abstract pictures of energy flow. It could be done as a poster activity, with each group writing reasons for their matches on the poster. They should cut up the sheets showing the abstract pictures and lay them out on the poster in the arrangement shown below, leaving spaces to match the situations against them. Having made their choices and written their reasons, the posters can form the basis for a class discussion.

Also included here are some examples of pupil discussion related to the activity on insulation, in order to give an idea of the range of understanding that might be expected.

What to do

1. Read page 3 which describes the practical activity, and make predictions of the temperatures as explained on the sheet. If you are doing the practical activity with pupils, then each group needs the following apparatus:
Beaker, thermometer, boiling tube, insulated boiling tube (wrap cotton wool around the tube, then a plastic bag and seal with rubber bands), stop clock, access to water at 80⁰C, 20⁰C and 5⁰C.

2. Typical values for each of the three pairs of tubes are 60⁰C and 50⁰C, 20⁰C and 20⁰C, 10⁰C and 15⁰C. Now try the questions on page 4. These are intended to encourage pupils to interpret these results by thinking about the direction and relative sizes of the energy flows due to temperature differences. The key idea here is that insulation is a barrier to energy flow. If you are doing this as a pupil activity, it may be useful to make this sheet up as an OHT for class discussion before they attempt the questions themselves.

3. Page 5, page 6 and page 7 include an activity in which situations are matched against abstract pictures. This is to enable pupils to apply the ideas they have learnt in the practical activity in a range of everyday situations. Cut out each of the situations and the abstract pictures as described in the instructions, and match the situations to the abstract pictures. It is better to cut out the pictures rather than to make the matches directly from the sheets, since this encourages more discussion and it is easier to see the patterns that emerge.

4. When you have completed the making the matches, then check your answers on page 2. If you have matched more than one situation against one abstract picture, then think about what is similar between the two situations. Making abstractions and generalisations about what appear to be different kinds of situation is of fundamental importance in thermodynamic thinking.

5. On page 8, there are some examples of pupils discussing the activity using abstract pictures of insulation. Read what they say. How well do you think they understand the basic ideas about temperature differences, energy flows and insulation as a barrier. How well do they differentiate between concepts such as energy, heat and temperature? Can you identify any alternative ideas that they hold?

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Introduction to Teachers' Workshop 1