Heat Transfer Graphic Organizer – Blank Chart and Sample

How it works

This heat transfer graphic organizer asks the same three questions of conduction, convection and radiation. The answers line up across the page, so the differences between the three are easy to see.

Read the full guide

What all three share

In every kind of heat transfer, heat flows from the hotter place to the cooler one, and it keeps flowing until both are at the same temperature. What changes from kind to kind is what carries it, so that is the question to ask of any example.

Real scenes mix the three. A campfire shows them all at once, which makes it a good subject for the one-scene sheet.
Convection needs something that can flow, so it is the usual way heat moves through liquids and gases.

Questions and answers

What are the three types of heat transfer?

Conduction, convection and radiation. Conduction passes heat between things that touch, convection carries it along in a moving liquid or gas, and radiation sends it as electromagnetic waves, which can cross empty space.

What is an example of each type of heat transfer?

A warm hand on a cold glass loses heat by conduction. A fan blowing warm air across a room moves heat by convection. The Sun warms the Earth by radiation. The filled-in sample uses these three.

What is the difference between conduction and convection?

In conduction the material stays where it is and heat passes from particle to particle; it is the main way heat moves within a solid. In convection the heated liquid or gas itself moves and takes the heat with it.

All 9 organizers

Charts 4

Heat transfer graphic organizer: conduction, convection, radiation A column for each kind of heat transfer and three rows: what it is, how the heat moves, and an example of your own.
Sideways chart: conduction, convection, radiation The same chart on a landscape page, so each box is wider.
Sorting sheet: three open columns Three open columns for sorting examples called out in class.
Which kind is it? One example a row Write or type an example on each row, then tick conduction, convection or radiation and say how you know.

Draw and write 4

Find all three in one scene A space at the top to draw one scene, such as a campfire, and a box for where each kind of heat transfer happens in it.
One kind of heat transfer in four boxes A whole page for one kind, with its name in the middle.
Three boxes to draw and write A box for each kind, with space to draw an example over lines to explain it.
Two to a page: an example of each kind Two half sheets with a cut line between them, each with three short boxes. For the last minutes of a lesson.

Filled-in sample 1

Sample heat transfer organizer, filled in The opening chart with all nine boxes written in.