Key Idea: The amount of energy an object has depends on how warm it is.
Students should know that:
- Every object, regardless of whether it is a solid, a liquid, or a gas, has some amount of energy that is related to its temperature.
- The higher an object’s temperature is, the more energy it has, and the lower an object’s temperature is, the less energy it has (assuming temperature is the only thing that changes).
Boundaries:
- The term “thermal energy” is not used in Basic level items because energy will be treated as a unified concept at this level and not in its various forms.
- At this level, students will not be assessed on the relationship between thermal energy and mass or the relationship between thermal energy and the material of which the object is made. This knowledge is covered under the intermediate level thermal energy idea.
- Assessment items are limited to scenarios in which mass is held constant, by involving only one object or two identical objects.
- In assessment items, the temperature changes are limited to those that do not involve changes of state.
- Students at this level are not expected to know that even very cold objects have thermal energy.
| Item ID Number |
Knowledge Being Assessed | Grades 4–5 |
Grades 6–8 |
Grades 9–12 |
Select This Item for My Item Bank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
As sand gets warmer, the amount of energy the sand has increases. | 62% | 71% |
72% |
|
|
68% | 68% |
67% |
|
||
47% | 53% |
54% |
|
Misconception |
Student Misconception |
Grades 4–5 |
Grades |
Grades |
|---|---|---|---|---|
16% | 18% |
19% | ||
As objects heat up, energy is released or used up (AAAS Pilot test, 2013). | 16% | 14% |
14% | |
13% | 11% |
14% |
Frequency of selecting a misconception was calculated by dividing the total number of times a misconception was chosen by the number of times it could have been chosen, averaged over the number of students answering the questions within this particular idea.
Code |
Statement |
|---|---|