Audience
Educators
Grade Levels
Grades 5-8
Subject
Physical Science, Energy, Matter and Its Properties
Type
Lesson Plans / Activities, Videos
Maintaining a comfortable temperature through thermal energy transfer plays a large role in sustaining life, both aboard the International Space Station and on Earth oceans. In this STEMonstration, NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara explains three different ways thermal energy can be transferred from object to object to help maintain homeostasis: conduction, convection, and radiation. Learn how astronauts aboard the space station observe changes in ocean life and send their observations to scientists on Earth.
In the corresponding classroom connection, students will conduct their own experiments and classify natural phenomena into one of the three types of thermal energy transfer.
STEMonstrations are short, 3-5-minute educational videos filmed by the crew aboard the International Space Station. The crew uses the unique microgravity environment on station to demonstrate popular K-12 STEM topics.
Classroom Connection: Thermal Energy
Grade Levels: 6 – 8
Time Required: 60-90 minutes
Next Generation Science Standards:
MS-PS3-3: Apply scientific principles to design, construct, and test a device which will minimize or maximize thermal energy transfer.
MS-PS3-4: Plan an investigation to determine the relationships among the energy transferred, the type of matter, the mass, and the change in the average kinetic energy of the particles as measured by the temperature of the sample.