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Hot, High, and Fast Energy

Summary: This activity is designed to help you recognize energy use and to understand that one form of energy can change into another. One way to develop an intuition for energy is by working with simple kinds of energy.

Materials:

Classroom Management: Students are encouraged to discuss many of the questions and to complete the chart in this activity within groups.

Activity Steps:

1. Can you find examples of things that have energy?

Anything that is hot or high or fast has energy. Which objects are hot, high or fast in the picture below? Those objects have a lot of energy. Think about these:

Try locating hot, high, or fast in the following locations:

Scarry Picture 1 http://www.amazon.com/images/P/0307165515.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif

Scarry Picture 2 http://www.amazon.com/images/P/0307168034.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif

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*Note: This way of identifying energy sounds a bit vague but in fact is based on good science.

"Hot" - Something that is hot has heat energy. The hotter and larger it is, the more heat energy it has, and the faster the molecules are going.

"High" - Something that is high has the potential to fall because gravity pulls on it. This is only one kind of potential energy, energy that is stored and ready to go.

"Fast" - Something that is fast is moving at a high speed and has been given a force to move. The faster and bigger the fast object is, the more motion energy it has.

2. Can you find examples of objects gaining or losing energy?

Now that you can find things with energy, look for clues that objects are changing energy.

If it is heating up, speeding up or being lifted up, the object is gaining energy.

If it is cooling down, slowing down or going down, then it is losing energy.

Talk together as a class or in small groups, and write examples you can recall from your own neighborhood in the Energy Change Chart.

 

3. Learning new names:

These types of energies we have talked about have technical names, and they are:

When somethings is hot, we will say that has heat energy.

When something is high, we will say that is has gravitational potential energy.

When somethings is moving, we will say that it has kinetic energy.

You can learn these more easily if you back to the chart and write the technical names next to your examples. Energy Change Chart

 

Go on to Energy Conversions

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