MathsClass

Try a little origami. Show them a heat sink and 3 sheets of paper; one that roughly corresponds to the surface area, one larger, and one smaller. Label each sheet with the dimensions. Ask students to make some guesses. Build intuition or maybe surprise them. Ask students to make calculations. Show them a prefolded solution. Check their intuition. Maybe give each student a sheet of paper and try to come up with heat sinks with more surface area? This is not science class, but you can get some [url="http://www.roymech.co.uk/Related/Thermo.html"]thermo numbers here[/url] and ask students about what surface area is needed if you created heat sinks using different materials (e.g. gold, copper, silver, plastic, cotton wool) A similar problem is [url="http://numberwarrior.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/what-can-you-do-with-this-giant-ants-of-doom/"]giant ants of doom[/url] at the Number Warrior. It's about surface area and oxygen absorption.