Skip to Content Go to sign in Skip to Primary Navigation Skip to Secondary Navigation Skip to Page Navigation Skip to Header Navigation Skip to Footer Navigation Read more about accessability options and our navigation

Physics Classroom is making strides to make our site accessible to everyone. Our site contains 6 navigation areas. The Primary, Secondary, and Page Level navigations have a screen reader version of their nav structure that allows using the left and right keys to navigate sibling navigation items, and up or down keys to navigate parent or child navigation items. The others can be navigated using tabs. The Primary Navigation handles the first 2 levels of site pages. The Secondary (which is not always available) handles the 3rd and 4th level of structure. The Page level navigation allows you to navigate the current page's headings quickly. The Header Navigation contains the Light/Dark Mode toggle, Search, Notifications and account login. The Breadcrumb Navigation contains the breadcrumb of the current page. If the current page has a breadcrumb, you can get to it by skipping to the content and tabbing in reverse (shift plus tab). The Footer Navigation contains links such as Privacy, Contact, about and terms. Some resources contain an Audio Player that can be activated by holding down the T key for 3 seconds, and then using K to pause and resume. While not every area of Physics Classroom is usable purely from keyboard and screen reader, we are committed to continue work on making this possible. If you have questions or need additional help, please use this link to contact us.

Return to screen reader navigation
Home Science Reasonings Thermal Physics Heating Curves About

About the Science Reasoning Center

Highly Recommended
Like all our Science Reasoning Center activities, the completion of the Heating Curves activity requires that a student use provided information about a phenomenon, experiment, or data presentation to answer questions. This information is accessible by tapping on the small thumbnails found on the bottom right of every question. However, it may be considerably easier to have a printed copy of this information or to display the information in a separate browser window. You can access this information from this page.





The Standards
The Heating Curves task describes the state changes that occur in a sample of matter as it is heated from a temperature below its melting point to a temperature above its boiling point in a closed container. In addition to the two paragraphs describing the state changes, a heating curve graph is included. Questions target a student's ability to use the model presented in the body of text to interpret the graph, to connect information in the body of text to the graph, and to compare various points on the graph to one another in terms of the state of matter that is present and the process (state change or temperature increase) that is occurring.

Success with the task requires some degree of proficiency with respect to ...
  • Developing and Using Models (Science and Engineering Practice 2.3)
    Develop, revise, and/or use a model based on evidence to illustrate and/or predict the relationships between systems or between components of a system.
  • Developing and Using Models (Science and Engineering Practice 2.6)
    Develop and/or use a model (including mathematical and computational) to generate data to support explanations, predict phenomena, analyze systems, and/or solve problems.
  • Systems and System Models (Crosscutting Concept 4.1)
    When investigating or describing a system, the boundaries and initial conditions of the system need to be defined and their inputs and outputs analyzed and described using models.
  • Stability and Change (Crosscutting Concept 7.1)
    Much of science deals with constructing explanations of how things change and how they remain stable.


While Heating Curves addresses the two NextGen Science and Engineering Practices and the two Crosscutting Concepts above, the activity drew its greatest inspiration from ACT's College Readiness Standards for Science Reasoning. The activity consists of 47 questions organized into 12 Question Groups that are spread across the three activities. The questions target a single strand (Evaluation of Models, Inferences, and Experimental Results - EMI) of the College Readiness Standards. The two main standards that are addressed are ...

EMI 401:
Determine which simple hypothesis, prediction, or conclusion is, or is not, consistent with a data presentation, model, or piece of information in text.

EMI 501:
Determine which simple hypothesis, prediction, or conclusion is, or is not, consistent with two or more data presentations, models, and/or pieces of information in text

 


View: Table of Science Reasoning Standards.






Complementary and Similar Resources
The following resources at The Physics Classroom website complement the Heating Curves Science Reasoning Activity. Teachers may find them useful for supporting students and/or as components of lesson plans and unit plans.

Physics Classroom Tutorial, Thermal Physics Chapter: What Does Heat Do?

Concept Builders, Thermal Chemistry and Thermodynamics: Measuring the Quantity of Heat

The Calculator Pad, Thermal Chemistry and Thermodynamics, Problem Sets TC2 and TC3

Also see:

Heating Curves Activity Teacher Preview Pages (Task Tracker Teachers Only)
About The Science Reasoning Center SRC and Task Tracker