Investigating Heat

Science is an important topic in our urban world as we are surrounded by technology based on the ways that physics, chemistry, biology and all other sciences work. Textbooks are necessary, of course, as are other books that cover the same topics in different ways. The “Investigating Science Challenges” series of books wisely limits itself to the area of physics, what most people think of as science, presenting the material with the key information in small pieces and lots of pictures. Each book has three “Let’s Investigate” sections, an experiment related to the topic using easily available materials and demonstrating a concept given in the text.

Richard Spilsbury has taken on a series of concepts that most people struggle with and has presented them clearly and briefly. He has successfully included both interesting real world facts and definitions on many of the pages and also includes related and exciting photographs. It is great to see a wide variety of young people showing how to do the experiments and illustrating the points of the text. Some of the people appear in more than one book giving more sense of continuity.

It is encouraging that, in addition to the glossary, references and index, there are tips for doing the experiments included at the back of the book. Once readers have used one of the books, they will know what to expect in the others.

Investigating Heat superbly establishes the basics of heat covering the concepts of heating, cooling, absorbing and reflecting using heat. As with the other books in the “Investigating Science Challenges” series, each main topic is separated with an experiment related to the concept. The first section is heat, where it comes from and conducting heat and adding an experiment showing how melting is affected by the type of material holding the substance. Next is cooling down and how insulation can slow this process. The third part discusses convection and the absorbing and reflection of heat. The final section covers changing forms of heat and energy with some suggestions for further explorations of how heat flows from one area to another. This gives a pretty complete picture of heat.

As with any science book the reader will have to think through the concepts involved although they are very well presented here. The experiments have also been very well chosen; however, since they involve heat, they will take a while to complete. This is the nature of heat and to be expected.

The “Investigating Science Challenges” seems to be designed to fill specific curriculum requirements in both science and in research methods. If this is the case, the series is a success as it contains numerous ways to draw students into the topics and experiments that are easy enough for young people to perform while getting a more practical understanding of how science works. A budding scientist or engineer will be particularly attracted to these ideas and to the method of presentation.