Forms of Energy – Heat, Light, and Sound

Heat, light, and sound are all forms of energy.  Teaching about energy to primary students is fun and exciting.  In fact, the topics of heat, light, and sound are electrifying… ahem…  In this post, I will share simple books, videos, and experiments to help teach about the forms of energy – heat, light, and sound.

forms of energy

FORMS OF ENERGY- HEAT, LIGHT, AND SOUND

When I begin teaching about the forms of energy, I like to separate them by the five senses.  For example, I explain that light can’t be felt, or heard, but it can be seen.  Turn the lights on and off and try to feel it.  Try to hear it.  The sense we use for light is sight.  We can’t start a fire at school, but I lead students through a time they stood in front of a fireplace or campfire.  Put on a video of a fireplace fire or campfire.  Explain heat is felt and heard (crackling and popping).  Sound is heard first then felt through vibrations.  These simple explanations help students to begin to understand how energy comes in different forms.

Forms of energy - heat, light, and soundForms of energy - heat, light, and soundforms of energy heat light sound

BEGIN WITH BOOKS

The books below are on the topics of forms of energy – heat, light, and sound are linked for you to Amazon (affiliate links).  If purchasing new items is out of the question, I search my school library for the topic to see what can be pulled together.  Also,  I enjoy giving lists of books to my school librarian for when they are adding to the school titles for future learning!

RESEARCH WITH VIDEOS

Furthermore, I love to use books and videos as part of our information research on any of our science topics.  For example, below are some videos on the topic from YouTube.  I am not endorsing these, but they do have some good points that could help in explaining forms of energy.

EXPERIMENTS WITH FORMS OF ENERGY – HEAT, LIGHT, AND SOUND

When explored, each topic heat, light, and sound allow students to recognize and understand the energy around them.  Below are the interactive activities I use with students to follow up the information we learn through the books and videos.  Each day we add one or two activities to our science journals or these interactive folding books.

HEAT ENERGY

To define heat energy, heat energy is the result of the movement of tiny particles called atoms, molecules, or ions.  Energy from heat is transferred from one object to another. The transfer due to the difference in temperature between the two objects is called heat.

 

LIGHT ENERGY

What is light energy? Energy from light consists of photons, which are produced when an object’s atoms heat up. Light travels in waves and is the only form of energy visible to the human eye.

forms of energy

forms of energy forms of energy

SOUND ENERGY

What is sound energy? Sound energy is the movement of energy through a substance – such as air or water – in the form of waves. It is produced when a force causes an object or substance to vibrate.

To conclude, if you are interested in all three Forms of Energy interactive books, you can click HERE to get the bundle of all three for a discount.

Forms of energy heat light sound

MORE TOPICS OF STUDY

Keep the learning going strong with more science topics!  Click HERE to read more on teaching magnets, force, and motion.magnets

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4 Comments

  1. thanks so much, I really very like your article because this article is very informative for me
    and is also provide very deep and correct information about light and light energy

  2. I live this article- I feel like this is setting me up for the first few weeks of energy. I do think your product is very expensive however. I am still going to buy it because it’s awesome!

  3. Do you by chance have a list of the book titles pictured including authors? My old eyes can’t read the authors’ names from the pictures, and often have better luck find the books in my library system by searching the author’s name.

    1. The books are clickable and will take you to Amazon where you can see more clearly who they are written by.