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If you put an ice cube in a glass of lemonade, the ice cube melts. The thermal energy from your lemonade moves to the ice cube. Increasing the temperature of the ice cube and decreasing the temperature of your lemonade. The movement of thermal energy is called heat. The ice cube receives heat from your lemonade. Your lemonade gives heat to the ice cube. Heat can only move from an object of higher temperature to an object of lower temperature.

We're going to learn about temperature, heat energy, atoms, matter, phase changes, and more in our unit on Thermodynamics as we build steam boats, fire-water balloons, hero engines, thermostats, Stirling engines, and more!

One of the best things you can do with this unit is to take notes in a journal as you go.

Snap photos of yourself doing the actual experiment and paste them in alongside your drawing of your experimental setup. This is the same way scientists document their own findings, and it's a lot of fun to look back at the splattered pages later on and see how far you've come. I always jot down my questions that didn't get answered with the experiment across the top of the page so I can research it more later. Are you ready to get started?