How polar animals keep warm

A simple and fun science experiment about insulation, to see how blubber keeps penguins, whales, polar bears and seals warm in the North Pole.

This is one of a series of free STEM resources designed to allow learners to use the theme of the festive period to develop their knowledge and skills in Design and Technology, Science, Mathematics and Engineering.

In this activity, students will construct a straightforward model of a polar animal and use this to investigate how they keep themselves warm. They will understand how well a layer of blubber can insulate an animal and how the heat loss is reduced against an uninsulated animal.

This is a versatile activity that could serve as a main lesson activity to teach about insulation and heat transfer. It could also be used as part of a wider scheme of learning, focusing on how animals react to the world around them.

This activity could be carried out in pairs or small groups. The teacher presentation covers the main activity on slides 1 to 11, and the subsequent slides are extension work and links.

Resources required

An empty margarine tub
A full margarine tub
A large flat dish
Warm water
Cold water with ice
A thermometer
A stopwatch or smart watch timer
Graph paper
Pencils and differently coloured pencil crayons

The engineering context

Engineers must be able to investigate the natural world to understand how it works. This allows them to design solutions that benefit and learn from the environment, such as suits for divers that can keep them warm.

Suggested learning outcomes

By the end of this activity, students will be able to understand how polar animals keep warm in very cold conditions, they will be able to understand what blubber is and how it helps polar animals to survive, and they will be able to record experiment data using tables and graphs.

Download the How polar animals keep warm activity sheets for free!

All activity sheets and supporting resources are free to download, and all the documents are fully editable, so you can tailor them to your students’ and your schools’ needs.

The activity sheet includes teacher notes, guidance, useful web links, and links (where appropriate) to the national curriculum in each of the four devolved UK nations; England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Oh ho ho please do share your experiment highlights with us @IETeducation! #SantaLovesSTEM.