How to Teach Specific Heat

By (overcoming a fear) and putting fire in their mouth , students will be really interested in specific heat.
This is the best way to teach specific heat to high school students.

Step 1: Gather the supplies

1.coffee stirrers WOOD ONLY
2.lighter

Comments

[harristotle]

Lick your fingers and use them to extinguish a candle. This is the old, smokeless way of putting out candles, and most of your great grandparents would have done this daily. (Although, as with your example, you actually have two concepts at play - high specific heat of water and the high temperature but low heat in the flame-finger interaction. )

The issue with the mouth is that it is much scarier, the engagement can be got with the candle trick, and you don't have the problem of hair getting in the way if the kid flinches at the last minute.
And practice, repeatedly, before you try it out on a live student :)

Another spectacular demo is to pour molten pewter into water. For a 30g glob of pewter at 350 degrees into 150 ml of water, you will get a temperature rise of only 3 degrees (K or C). NEVER USE ANY METAL OTHER THAN TIN/PEWTER. Sorry to shout, but I can just see someone using zinc or aluminium, both of which are reactive enough at these temperatures to dissociate the water into hydrogen gas, which is an explosion hazard.

Anyway, good on you for teaching in an experiential style. It is great teaching, if done competently by a skilled teacher.

[thinkiam]

I believe you can design engaging lessons without opening yourself up to the legal problem this activity would produce. You remind me of a science teacher we had that blew 2 of his fingers off making root beer in the classroom. Some ideas seem great but...

[jonnyd55]

Ha ha. Lol, this must be a wind up? I agree it's a fantastic idea................. If you want to loose your job & potentially get your ass sued into next millennium! Great wind up :)

[lemonie]

Fire burns, this is a stupid idea.
You propose to put burning-wood in people's mouths while explaining the science of specific heat the whole time...?

L

[uncle jojo]

A teacher should carefully weigh the benefits of teaching science in a very engaging manner with the negative danger of stripping away the basic fear of fire. My science teacher introduced specific heat to me this way and I am eternally grateful. I chickened out at the time :)

[lemonie]

Hmm, I didn't think that you'd actually done this, you really should if you're presenting this as a good idea (or don't present it as such).

L

[Hoopajoo]

Wood or plastic coffee stirrers? I'm guessing the wood type since the plastic ones are likely to melt and burn your mouth and tongue VERY badly.

[uncle jojo]

WOOD ONLY thanks for pointing this out, this is very important.