NCERT Class 7 Science Heat

4 Heat 

In Chapter 3 you learnt that woollen clothes are made from animal fibres. You also know that cotton clothes are made from plant fibres. We wear woollen clothes during winters when it is cold outside. Woollen clothes keep us warm. We prefer to wear light coloured cotton clothes when it is hot. These give us a feeling of coolness. You might have wondered why particular types of clothes are suitable for a particular season.

In winter you feel cold inside the house. If you come out in the sun, you feel warm. In summer, you feel hot even inside the house. How do we know whether an object is hot or cold? How do we find out how hot or cold an object is? In this chapter we shall try to seek answers to some of these question.

4.1 HOT AND COLD

In our day-to-day life, we come across a number of objects. Some of them are hot and some of them are cold. Tea is hot and ice is cold. List some objects you use commonly in Table 4.1. Mark these objects as hot or cold. Do not touch objects which are too hot. Be careful while handling a candle flame or a stove.

We see that some objects are cold while some are hot. You also know that some objects are hotter than others while some are colder than others. How do we decide which object is hotter than the other? We often do it by touching the objects. But is our sense of touch reliable? Let us find out.

Activity 4.1

Take three large mugs. Label them as A, B and C. Put cold water in mug A and hot water in mug B. Mix some cold and hot water in mug C. Now dip your left hand in mug A and the right hand in mug B. After keeping the hands in the two mugs for 2–3 minutes, put both the hands simultaneously in mug C (Fig. 4.1). Do both the hands get the same feeling? Boojho’s confusion shows that we cannot always rely on our sense of touch to decide whether an objectis hot or cold. Sometimes it may deceive us.

Then, how do we find out how hot an object really is? A reliable measure of the hotness of an object is its temperature. Temperature is measured by a device called thermomete 

Exercises

1. State similarities and differences between the laboratory thermometer and the clinical thermometer.

2. Give two examples each of conductors and insulators of heat.

3. Fill in the blanks :

(a) The hotness of an object is determined by its __________.

(b) Temperature of boiling water cannot be measured by a _____________ thermometer.

(c) Temperature is measured in degree ______________.

(d) No medium is required for transfer of heat by the process of __________.

(e) A cold steel spoon is dipped in a cup of hot milk. It transfers heat to its other end by the process of ______________.

(f ) Clothes of ______________ colours absorb heat better than clothes of light colours.

Please refer to attached file for NCERT Class 7 Science Heat