In Save the Penguins, the broad context is global climate change. Students learn that the energy we use to heat and cool our houses comes from power plants, most of which use fossil fuels to convert chemical energy to electrical energy. The burning of fossil fuels has been linked to increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which in turn has been linked to increases in global temperature. This change in temperature has widespread effects upon life on Earth. Penguins live in the southern hemisphere, primarily on the icy continent of Antarctica. As the Earth warms and ice melts, penguins lose habitat. Therefore, students see that better-designed houses that use less energy for heating and cooling can have an effect on penguins. Energy efficient houses that
minimize unnecessary heat transfer will draw less electricity from the fossil fuel burning power plants and not contribute as much to global climate change.

This lesson guides students through an investigation of the expansion and contraction of metal due to changes in temperature.

Astronaut Jack "2fish" Fischer stopped by for the latest episode of the Smithsonian's ISS Science and tried out a hands-on experiment involving boiling water.

Astronaut Randy Bresnik talks about the challenges of working in the raging heat and freezing cold. Also check out an experiment you can do in your classroom.

In this activity, students learn how engineers use solar energy to heat buildings by investigating the thermal storage properties of some common materials: sand, salt, water and shredded paper. Students then evaluate the usefulness of each material as a thermal storage material to be used as the thermal mass in a passive solar building.

This article provides elementary school teachers with background knowledge about science concepts needed to understand the first of seven essential principles of climate literacy--the sun is the primary source of energy for our climate system. Graphs, diagrams, and oneline resources provide more background for the teacher. The article appears in a free online magazine that focuses on the seven essential princples of the climate sciences.

Using a household fan, cardboard box and paper towels, student teams design and build their own evaporative cooler prototype devices. They learn about the process that cools water during the evaporation of water. They make calculations to determine a room's cooling load, and thus determine the swamp cooler size. This activity adds to students' understanding of the behind-the-scenes mechanical devices that condition and move air within homes and buildings for human health and comfort.

Watch the ZOOM cast discover which insulator -- newspaper or aluminum foil -- is better at keeping an ice cube frozen longer.

The basic objective of Unified Engineering is to give a solid understanding of the fundamental disciplines of aerospace engineering, as well as their interrelationships and applications. These disciplines are Materials and Structures (M); Computers and Programming (C); Fluid Mechanics (F); Thermodynamics (T); Propulsion (P); and Signals and Systems (S). In choosing to teach these subjects in a unified manner, the instructors seek to explain the common intellectual threads in these disciplines, as well as their combined application to solve engineering Systems Problems (SP). Throughout the year, the instructors emphasize the connections among the disciplines.

In this article, teachers find two unit plans (grades K-2 and 3-5) that use resources featured in the science and literacy articles in the magazine. The unit plans are modeled after the five key steps in the learning cycle: engage, explore, explain, expand, and assess, or evaluate. The plans are aligned with the science content standards of the National Science Education Standards and the English language arts standards of the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. The plans appear in the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle.

Students learn about the definition of heat as a form of energy and how it exists in everyday life. They learn about the three types of heat transfer conduction, convection and radiation as well as the connection between heat and insulation. Their learning is aided by teacher-led class demonstrations on thermal energy and conduction. A PowerPoint® presentation and quiz are provided. This prepares students for the associated activity in which they experiment with and measure what they learned in the lesson by designing and testing insulated bottles.

That heat flows from hot to cold is an unavoidable truth of life. People have put a lot of effort into stopping this natural physical behavior, however all they have been able to do is slow the process. Student teams investigate the properties of insulators in their attempts to keep cups of water from freezing, and once frozen, to keep them from melting.

Students learn the importance of heat transfer and heat conductance. Using hot plates, student groups measure the temperature change of a liquid over a set time period and use the gathered data to calculate the heat transfer that occurs. Then, as if they were engineers, students pool their results to discuss and determine the best fluid to use in a car radiator.

With the help of simple, teacher-led demonstration activities, students learn the basic physics of heat transfer by means of conduction, convection, and radiation. They also learn about examples of heating and cooling devices, from stove tops to car radiators, that they encounter everyday in their homes, schools, and modes of transportation. Since in our everyday lives there are many times that we want to prevent heat transfer, students also consider ways that conduction, convection, and radiation can be reduced or prevented from occurring.