2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Drawing on hands-on minds-on learning theory, this activity is designed to help students better understand and retain somewhat abstract concepts. Heat Transfer through the mechanisms of conduction, convection, and radiation are fundamental concepts but their micro-structural aspects are obscure to students as evidenced by class discussions after assigned readings on the subject. In this activity, senior mechanical engineering students are asked to create physical representations using multi-colored M&Ms (colorful round chocolate candies) of atomic and molecular-scale phenomena pertaining to conduction, convection, and radiation in solid, liquid, and gas phases of matter. Students are assigned the reading a few days in advance and asked to come to the laboratory session having thought about the physical representations. During the 100-minutes-long laboratory session, students work in teams. Each team is assigned either a solid, liquid, or gas phase. They are provided with M&Ms and cookie sheets. They discuss, plan, and enact their representations in the first half of the session. Then, the whole class walks to each station. The students at the station give a brief informal presentation on their representation and answer any questions. During this informal question & answer session, faculty organizes key features of the three modes of heat transfer on the board. Students actively contribute to the information jot on the board. Post-activity, they are provided one week to reflect on the process. In this paper, I shall present their reflections along with the activity prompts and student representations. Students have indicated superior learning outcomes due to (i) having to think about and enact physical representation; (ii) debrief information jot on the board after the activity during the question-and-answer session. This activity is often referred to while discussing various specific topics of Heat Transfer in subsequent lectures. Having performed this activity in the first week of classes, students present deeper modes of understanding and interest in the subject during the semester as evidenced by enhanced class participation and performance in the exams.