You will need:
Put the first ice cube on the plate. Put the second ice cube in one paper cup and push the second paper cup inside the first one and down over the ice. Do the same with the third ice cube and the styrofoam cups.
Wait for several minutes. What happens to the ice cube on the plate? The heat from the room causes the ice to melt. Once it has completely melted, check the ice cubes in the cups. What do you find?
Heat moves from a warmer place to a colder place. The heat from the room flowed into the ice cube on the plate. That caused the water molecules to warm up and become liquid. To get to the ice cube on the plate, the heat only had to move through air and it does this quickly.
The heat cannot move as easily through the paper cup, so the ice cube melted some, but not completely. In the styrofoam cups, the ice melted very little. To get to those ice cubes, the heat must move through the cups of paper and styrofoam. An insulator only allows heat to move through it slowly. Which cup is a better insulator? The styrofoam one. The ice melted only a little bit in the styrofoam cups.
A material that allows heat to flow easily is called a conductor.
Your house has insulation to keep out the cold. Can you think of other things that are insulators or conductors? Does your winter coat need to be a good insulator? What would a cooking pan be? Why?
I hope your coat is a good insulator to keep you warm. A cooking pan must allow the heat to move easily from the stove burner to what is in the pan, so it must be good conductor.
Look around and you will find other insulators and conductors. Use your insulators to stay warm through this cold month of January!
Cool web sites about water and heat:
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