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6th grade · Science · Unit 14 of 17

Energy Transfers & Waves

Energy is conserved as it changes form, and waves carry energy.

What your child practices

Practices how energy is conserved as it is transferred and transformed in systems such as circuits, food webs, roller coasters and photosynthesis, and how transverse and longitudinal waves carry energy.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) teks student expectation: 6.8(B); 6.8(C) · conservation of energy in systems, and energy carried by transverse and longitudinal waves

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Energy is conserved: it changes form or moves, but isn't created or destroyed.
  2. A bulb changes electrical energy into light and thermal energy.
  3. Plants change light energy into chemical energy. Eating moves that energy to animals.
  4. Waves carry energy. In a transverse wave, particles move at right angles to the wave's direction.

Example: A rabbit eats clover. Which way does the energy move? The clover stored chemical energy. Eating moves it into the rabbit. Answer: from the clover to the rabbit

Energy Transfers & Waves in Texas

In the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), this is unit 14 of 17 in 6th grade Science, after Managing Resources and before Earth's Spheres & Layers.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Texas Education Agency (TEA)

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    In a circuit, a battery's chemical energy becomes…

    • electrical energy
    • nuclear energy
    • potential energy of height
    • mass

  2. Question 2

    The crowded part of a longitudinal wave is a…

    • trough
    • rarefaction
    • compression
    • crest

  3. Question 3

    Energy is never created or destroyed. It is…

    • lost forever
    • made from nothing
    • only stored
    • transferred or transformed

  4. Question 4

    The low point of a transverse wave is the…

    • trough
    • crest
    • amplitude
    • compression

  5. Question 5

    A bigger amplitude means a wave carries…

    • less energy
    • more energy
    • only sound
    • no energy

  6. Question 6

    A solar panel charges a battery that runs a fan. Put the energy in order.

    • Motion → light → chemical
    • Chemical → light → motion
    • Light → electrical → chemical → electrical → motion
    • Electrical → light → chemical

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