Sustainable housing
Students will learn about heat transfer and the thermal properties of matter to design an energy-passive home.
STELR sustainable housing teaches students about thermal properties and heat transfer.
It uses the context of designing a low energy home to explore these concepts.
The inquiry-based and hands-on learning program engages and challenges both students and teachers. The equipment kit includes class sets of purpose-designed and built equipment. The resource maps to the Australian Curriculum Science, primarily at Year 9, but can be modified for use in years 7-10 and upper secondary depth studies.
The activities included in the STELR sustainable housing students book allow students to build a model low energy house and:
- learn about the particle model of matter
- investigate the three states of matter
- investigate how heat is transferred by convection, conduction and radiation
- investigate different materials used in housing (windows, insulation, roofing)
- learn about wave models and energy transfer in the form of sound and light
- investigate careers and study pathways in the housing industry.
The STELR sustainable housing program is a 6-8 week course.
Download the teacher and student workbooks as PDFs
Sustainable housing equipment
STELR renewable energy equipment was designed and developed in Australia exclusively for STELR and is robust, simple and easy to use.
The STELR sustainable housing equipment kit includes house frames, a variety of building materials, fan and heating panels as well as temperature sensors and a data logger. The teacher kit contains additional materials for testing.
This kit provides all the equipment needed to complete the sustainable housing investigations provided in our module workbooks or be engaged with on its own.
Buy this kit
Download the STELR order form for classroom and teacher kits.
