Energy types and

transformations
The energy types are:
 Magnetic
 Kinetic (movement)
 Heat (or thermal)
 Light
 Gravitational potential (when something has the ability to fall)
 Chemical (stored – eg/ wax, food, petrol, batteries)
 Sound (please don’t called this sonar)
 Elastic potential (when something is stretched or squashed)
 Electrical
 Nuclear The law of conservation of energy.

Energy transformations and

usage
Simple energy transformation diagrams:
Input energy type  Output energy types (often more than one)
Energy transfer is measured in Joules, J.
Energy input = Total energy output

Temperature and heat energy

The units of temperature are degrees Celsius or °C.
Temperature is a way of measuring how much heat energy something has.
The freezing temperature of pure water is 0 °C
The boiling temperature of pure water is 100°C

How does a thermometer work?

Most ‘traditional’ thermometers (or ‘expansion thermometers’)
consist of a glass tube with a bulb at the bottom and a coloured
liquid inside.
The liquid expands as it gets warmer filling more of the tube and
so reaching a higher temperature on the scale.
The liquid contracts (or shrinks) as it gets cooler, taking up less space in the
tube and so reaching a lower temperature on the scale.
Conduction
Conduction is how heat travels through solids.

Materials that let heat travel through them easily are called ‘conductors’ and
materials that don’t let heat travel through them easily are called ‘insulators’.

Metals are good conductors

Glass, plastic and wood are good insulators – or bad conductors.
How does conduction actually work?

First we need to know 3 things:

1. Everything is made of particles
2. Particles are moving or vibrating all the time
3. The hotter something is, the more the particles move or vibrate

In a solid the particles are really close to each other.

Their wiggling (or vibrating) is contagious, so if a particle’s neighbor is
wiggling fast, so will the particle.
In this way vibrations (and therefore heat) is spread through the solid.

These particles are

vibrating a lot These particles are vibrating less
because they are hot at the moment but will vibrate
more as the vibrations (and heat)
get passed along
Convection
Convection is how heat travels through fluids (liquids and gases)
Convection doesn’t work in solids because although the particles can vibrate,
they cannot move around.

How does convection work?

When a fluid is heated, the increased movement of the particles causes the
fluid to expand (because the particles move apart from each other). The hot
fluid is now less dense than the fluid around it so it rises. When a fluid cools, it
contracts, this makes it more dense and causes it to sink.

What is a convection current?

When hot fluid rises, cold fluid moves in to replace the air that has risen. This
creates a cycle of air rising and sinking called a convection current. (See the
radiator picture above - the arrows show the convection current.)
The convection loop demonstration:
  When the fluid is heated, it expands and rises.

 As it travels along the top it cools down.

 When a fluid cools down it contracts and sinks.

The hot and cold water practical:

Hot Water When the hot water was on top of the cold water, you would
see that the colours don’t mix – the red coloured warm water
mostly stays in the top cup and the blue coloured cold water
stays in the bottom cup.

What happens if you put the cold water on top instead?

Cold Water When the cold water was on top of the hot water the colours
would mix very quickly as the cold water is less dense than the
hot water so it sinks, and the hot water rises.

Uses and examples of convection:

Radiators are placed at the bottom of the room because
hot air rises. Air conditioning units are placed near the
ceiling because cold air sinks.

It is nearly always windy at the seaside because of

convection currents. During the day, the land is warmer
than the sea so the warm air rises and is replaced by
cooler air from the ocean. At night, the sea is warmer so
the warm air over the sea rises and is
replaced by the cooler air from the land.
Hot air balloons rise because the air inside them is hotter and less dense than
the air around them.
Kettles get convection currents in them too – the
water near the heating element heats up, expands
and rises and the cooler water at the top sinks
down to replace it.

Radiation
 Radiation (aka. infra-red radiation) is a form of heat transfer where the
heat travels as waves like light. All objects give out some radiation.
 Radiation transfers heat without using particles so it can travel through a
vacuum (empty space) but it can also travel through air.
 The hotter something is, the more radiation it gives out.
Thermal imaging cameras detect radiation and make
images based on how hot different things are.
Thermal imaging cameras can have lots of different uses
such as:
 Detecting concealed weapons (that are colder than
body temperature)
 Detecting disease or infection (increased blood flow means these areas
are often hotter)
 Detecting passengers with fevers at airports
 Finding people missing in areas of woodland

Black, matt surfaces are good emitters of radiation.

Light, shiny surfaces are poor emitters of radiation.

Black, matt surfaces are good absorbers of radiation.

Light, shiny surfaces are poor absorbers of radiation
because they reflect most of it.
Why are houses in hot countries often painted white?
The houses are painted white because it is a poor absorber so they reflect the
heat from the sun and the houses don’t get so hot inside. White is also a poor
emitter so in winter they stay warmer.

Expansion
Expansion in solids

When a material is heated, the particles start to move/vibrate more which

causes them to move apart and the material to expand.

When a material cools down, the particles start to move/vibrate less which
causes them to get closer together and the material to contract.
Note: The particles themselves do not change size, only the space between
them.
The ball and ring demonstration:
 At first the ball fits through the ring but when the ball is heated
it expands and won’t fit through the ring any more. When the
ball cools down it contracts and can fit through the ring again.

Problems caused by expansion/contraction in solids and their solutions:

1. Train tracks. Tracks are long strips of metal, if
they expand in high temperatures, it can
cause the track to buckle (as shown in the
picture) which can cause trains to derail. The
solution is periodically having ‘gaps’ in the
track to allow for expansion.

2. Bridges and roads. These also might buckle or

break if they expand so again they have gaps
to allow for expansion (but clever gaps so that
cars and people don’t fall down the hole!).

3. Electricity and telephone cables. These are hung loosely so that if they
contract during the winter when they cool down, they don’t snap or
damage the pylons.

Bimetallic strips
 A bimetallic strip is made of
two different thin strips of
metal attached together.
When you heat it, or cool it,
it bends.

Different metals have different expansivities – they expand and contract by

different amounts when heated.
When we heat a bimetallic strip, one metal expands more than the other so
the strip bends. By noting how much it bends at different temperatures, we
can use the strip like a thermometer.

Thermal expansion in fluids (liquids and gases)

Thermal expansion doesn’t only happen in solids, it happens in fluids (gases
and liquids) too. It is responsible for sea-levels rising, expansion thermometers
and hot air balloons taking flight!

Thermometers tell you the temperature because the

liquid inside them expands when heated. As it expands it
travels up the thin tube inside the
thermometer reaching higher temperature markings as it
expands more.

As air is heated, it expands because the particles move

further apart as they travel faster. They also collide more
vigorously with the side of the balloon increasing the
pressure in the balloon. As the balloon contains air with a
lower density than the air outside the balloon, the balloon rises as the air
around it sinks beneath it.

Different materials have different expansivities

A gas expands more than a liquid or solid (if they are heated by the same
amount) because the bonds between the particles are much weaker so even a
little extra energy can make them move a much larger distance apart. Liquids
will expand more than solids because the bonds in a liquid are weaker than
those in a solid.