ScienceFreePrintable

Heat Transfer Investigation Sheet

A free science worksheet ready for your classroom. Open in Kuraplan to grab the print-ready PDF, customize it for your students, or generate a fresh version in seconds.

Download now

Name:Date:

Heat Transfer Investigation Sheet

A travelling wildlife team needs to keep a small ice pack cold on a warm day. Use the science of heat transfer to investigate materials, interpret evidence and recommend a design. Heat moves overall from warmer places or objects to cooler ones. For practical work, use teacher-prepared equipment only; never touch hot water, lamps or heated objects.

Plan the investigation

A team compares identical cups of warm water with a metal spoon in one and a wooden spoon in the other. The handles are observed without touching them.

1.Predict which spoon handle will warm first. Explain why, using the words conductor or insulator.

2.For a fair comparison, name two things the team should keep the same and one thing they change.

3.Match each heat-transfer method to its description.

Conduction
Convection
Radiation

Heat transfer as liquids or gases move
Heat transfer by waves; no contact is needed
Heat transfer through direct contact

Read the evidence

A class tests two identical cups of water under the same lamp for 10 minutes. One cup is wrapped in dark paper; the other is wrapped in light paper. The table shows the results.

Cup covering

Starting temperature

Temperature after 10 minutes

Dark paper

20°C

25°C

Light paper

20°C

23°C

4.Which cup gained more temperature? Work out the temperature increase for each cup.

5.What does this result suggest about dark and light surfaces absorbing radiant energy? Give one reason the result alone does not prove that every dark object always becomes warmer.

6.Imagine a container of water heated gently from below. Describe what the water does as it warms and cools. Name the heat-transfer method.

Solve the wildlife team’s challenge

The team has a small ice pack and three possible wraps: aluminium foil, cotton cloth and bubble wrap. Their goal is to slow heat moving from the warm air into the ice pack.

7.Which wrap would you test first to help keep the ice pack cold? Explain how trapped air or material properties could slow heat transfer.

8.Complete the claim: Heat moves overall from to . In the ice-pack challenge, which way does heat move?

9.Choose the best explanation: sunlight warms a person’s skin mainly by…

conduction, because sunlight touches the skin
convection, because air must move from the Sun
radiation, because energy travels from the Sun through space
conduction, because the Sun is made of metal

10.A metal spoon rests in hot soup. True or false: heat is transferred along the spoon from the warmer soup towards the cooler handle by conduction.

TrueFalse

11.Write a short evidence-based recommendation to the wildlife team. Include a suitable wrap, the direction heat moves, and one heat-transfer method it could reduce.