A plethora of advice

Note: this section is under construction. The list of questions are shown, but there are no links to the pages showing the answers which are currently being completed.

There is no shortage of advice about how to talk and how not to talk about energy in the science classroom – good, bad and indifferent.

• Is introducing students to a ‘circus of energy changes’, a helpful starting point for them to practice using ‘energy descriptions’?
• Is using money as an analogy a good way of clarifying what energy is?
• What should I say causes changes to happen? Energy? Force? Entropy? Differences?
• Should I avoid talking about ‘forms of energy’, such as kinetic energy?
• Is it better to talk about where energy is and how it moves from one place to another?
• Should I avoid using the word ‘heat’? Or use it just as a verb, but never as a noun?
• Is it better to think of energy as ‘just a value’ or as something ‘substance-like’.
• Should I avoid using ‘energy’ to explain what happens in changes, and just use it as an ‘accounting device’.