Teaching Heat and Temperature

Most recent answer: 03/03/2009

Q:
How can I teach elementary school students about the difference between heat and temperature?
- Anonymous
A:
Maybe you can use an analogy. Take some vessels with water in them, maybe little ponds in a clay mound. Water will trickle from higher ponds to lower ponds, just like heat will flow from high temperature places to low temperature places. How much will flow depends on how big the ponds are, how much they're filled up, etc. The total amount of water that flows is like the heat flow.

So height is like temperature, and flow amount is like heat.

Mike W.

(published on 03/03/2009)