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Hot and cold

Heat and matter · level 1, lesson 1 of 6

A question to start

Soup, snow, a sunny window, a glass of milk from the fridge. Which are hot and which are cold? How do you know?

The idea

Your skin can feel hot and cold. Some things are very hot, some just warm, some cool and some very cold.

hotwarmcoolcold
  • Hot: soup, a bath, a sunny wall.
  • Cold: ice, snow, the inside of a freezer.

Be careful. Some things are too hot to touch: a cooker, a kettle, a pan. Grown-ups use oven gloves for them.

Worked examples

1. Soup. Steam rises from it. It is hot. Blow on it, or wait, before you eat it.

2. Milk from the fridge. The glass feels cold in your hand. It is cold.

3. The playground slide. In the sunshine on a summer day it can feel hot. In winter it feels cold.

Try it

  1. Is an ice lolly hot or cold?
  2. Is a bath hot, warm or cold?
  3. Name something too hot to touch.
  4. Name something colder than you.
Answers
  1. Cold.
  2. Warm (a good bath is warm, not very hot).
  3. A cooker, a kettle, an iron, a pan on the stove.
  4. Snow, ice, a cold drink, the inside of a fridge.

Common mistake

"Hot and cold are only two things." There are many in between. Warm and cool are in the middle, and some things are a little warmer than others.

Where it leads