Students will investigate the phenomenon of energy stored in snack foods, explore how chemical energy transforms into thermal energy, and develop a focused, investigable research question and hypothesis to guide their calorimeter experiment.

Students will design a systematic, peer-reviewed methodology for investigating the energy content of a specific snack food using a classroom calorimeter model, grounding their plan in scientific research and aligning it to their research question before collecting any data.

Students will systematically collect calorimeter data on their chosen snack foods, document conditions and anomalies, engage in structured peer and teacher feedback on data quality, and complete a methodology checkpoint before moving to analysis.

Students will transform their calorimeter data into meaningful evidence by creating data visualizations, identifying patterns and anomalies, interpreting relationships among mass, type of matter, and temperature change, and determining whether their findings support or complicate their original hypotheses.

Students will draw evidence-based conclusions from their calorimeter investigations, explicitly acknowledge limitations, generate new investigable questions, and present their full investigation process to an authentic audience at the Interactive Science Symposium.