Summary Use liquid crystal heat sensitive sheets, either outdoors on a sunny day, or indoors with heat lamps or tubs of warm and cool water. Science content Physics: Heat (3) Lessons activity is in Heat transfer and sources Animal senses Materials liquid crystal heat-sensitive sheets (I get Edmund Optics 25-30 range and cut into 9 smaller squares, before laminating. Note: expensive) if outdoors: full sun day, and outdoor walls, playground equipment, other outdoor objects, some that get warm in the sun indoor option: heat lamps, like these from Home Hardware indoor option: tubs of water, some warm if indoors Procedure Distribute sheets to students. Allow them to discover that the sun changes the colour of the sheets. Give them the colour scale (for my sheets, coolest is black, then getting warmer is red, orange, yellow, blue, then black again, so black can either be coolest or warmest). Allow students to explore the environment with their sheet. If they need suggestions, see the photos: block the sun's radiation with your hand/playground structure to make an image on the sheet use the sheet to measure how warm different playground structures are use the sheet to measure relative heat given off by differently-coloured walls use a heat pad to change the colour of the sheet use a tub of water to cool the sheet use drips of water to make patterns and paint on the sheet Discuss what kinds of heat transfer heated the sheets up: Radiation from the sun. Conduction when the sheet is pressed against a surface or water draws heat from the sheet. Use heat sensitive sheets to show how a tool like this helps us detect subtle changes in heat, whereas some animals have their own sense organs which can detect these changes e.g. snakes. Grades taught Gr 2 Gr 3
