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Science Starter: Temperature vs. Thermal Energy
I’m continuing to post my pre-class starter questions for physical science. The basic idea is to give them something to think (and hopefully discuss) with their neighbors before the start of the start of the lesson. I try to give some type of starting question that is related to the material they are working on.
One of the things from the previous meeting was the idea of thermal energy. The goal was to show that when two objects rub together in a frictional type contact interaction, BOTH objects increase in temperature and therefore increase in thermal energy. Just to be clear, in this part of the course we are focusing on energy and stuff.
I want to present a question that looks at the difference between temperature and thermal energy. Often times students will think that anything with a higher temperature also has more thermal energy, but of course this is not true.
OK, let me go ahead and present the question. Actually, this isn’t the actual question — I only gave four option and I did them all as pictures. If you want to find pictures of this stuff, it shouldn’t be difficult.
Question: Which of the following is the hottest? (Alternatively, rank them from coldest to hottest)
A. Pizza from an oven.
