ATA Science Council 2019 Conference

This session engages participants in activities that develop a process for students to visually communicate their understanding of energy and its transformations.

Understanding how energy is transformed and flows between objects is a central concept in science – yet it is an abstract idea that is difficult for students to grasp beyond an algebraic analysis. In this session, resources from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics will be presented and used to provide an intuitive introduction to the idea of energy and its transformations. The session will develop a process that allows students to visually demonstrate their understanding of energies and transformations involved in common situations in order to support internally consistent responses to energy problems.

Teachers will participate in classroom activities that introduce multiple visual representations of energy that can be used in any science classroom to reduce student difficulties in understanding energy and its transformations. These resources are suitable for multiple grade levels where energy and its transformation are discussed.

The activities through which the process is developed are especially suitable for Science 10 and Physics 20, as they introduce the curriculum topics of work and mechanical energy conceptually. We will extend these ideas to resources that align with the Physics 30 curriculum through activities based on nuclear transformations, ionizing radiation, and dark energy.