Heat Stations to Warm Up Your Thermal Energy Unit!

What better way to learn about heat transfer than to experience it firsthand?! Basic thermodynamic concepts provide a fantastic foundation for students learning chemistry and physics. One of my favorite station labs of the year are my heat stations and the learning from these stations lasts the whole year long! Through hands-on phenomena, students explore conduction, convection, radiation, and other concepts that govern the behavior of heat.

Over the years, I have adapted these stations to more closely meet the NGSS. I ask students to explain their observations in order to develop working definitions of conduction, convection, radiation, thermal expansion, etc. This is instead of providing students the vocabulary and definitions beforehand. The range of stations provide intrigue and cognitive conflict to help students get to higher levels of thinking and to construct their own understandings.

I have used 10 different stations some years and modified down to 7 or 8 other years. This year, being that I’m at a new school in a classroom that doesn’t have gas, I had to nix the Bunsen burners! But here are photos of my stations this year:

Amazing Melting Blocks

These blocks provide cognitive conflict as the ‘cold’ block melts an ice cube much faster than a ‘warm’ block. Students must consider what is happening to the heat. I like to stress that ‘there is no such thing as cold!’ to reinforce that heat is being drawn out of the ice by the more conductive block.

It’s Getting Hot in Here

This station is a great way to show that light can penetrate glass, but once it converts into heat inside the flask, the heat doesn’t escape as easily (if there is a stopper). The temperature inside the stoppered flask rises significantly more than the open flask, of course. This stations relates to a car with its windows up on a sunny summer day, as well as the Greenhouse Effect of our planet.

Too Hot to Handle

This ‘conduction star’ has 5 different types of metal that race to melt a pea of wax with the heat of a candle flame! Students learn here that different materials conduct heat at vastly different rates.

Fire From Air

When students swiftly press the plunger into the sleeve, the tiny filaments of cotton that they’ve put at the bottom smoke and light up! This station gets students talking about friction and pressure. They will also see a faint convection current in the smoke from the fire.

It’s in the Can

There is actually nothing in the cans… but students will observe that the black can gets hotter faster than the silver one. They know this principle from wearing dark clothes at recess on a sunny day, but this station really drives home the point that dark objects absorb more radiation than light ones.

Boiling Rice

This is definitely one of the coolest stations to see in action! Students usually have never seen or considered that boiling rice or pasta is moving in a convection current. Seeing rice boiling from the side of a clear beaker helps students to actually see, describe, and draw a convection current. This is one they won’t forget!

Icy Hot Swirls

When students drop food coloring into super hot and super cold waters, they will see the difference in diffusion rates, the difference in convection speed, and the phenomenon that hot fluid rises and cold fluid sinks. I refer back to this station a lot!

It’s in the Palm of Your Hand

I use these handboilers (a.k.a. love meters!) as a ‘extra’ station for people who finish at a station before we are ready to rotate. These provide the opportunity to discuss thermal expansion, what a vacuum means, and what boiling is!

Each station takes about 7 to 8 minutes. I like to put this candle timer on the front screen so everyone has a visual of how much time is left. My students carry around a packet with them, which has a section for each station where they record quantitative and qualitative data and observations. Each section also asks students to explain what the station shows about heat. I have the editable station signs and student packet in my store, as well as descriptions of the science behind each of the 10 stations and where to find the materials online.

If you are interested in trying some of these stations in this format, click the product picture below!