Fundamental Concepts and Principles Addressed (5-8)

Science as Inquiry

Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry

• Identify questions that can be answered through scientific investigations.
• Design and conduct a scientific investigation.
• Use appropriate tools and techniques to gather, analyze, and interpret data.
• Develop descriptions, explanations, predictions, and models using evidence.
• Think critically and logically to make the relationships between evidence and explanations.
• Communicate scientific procedures and explanations.
• Use mathematics in all aspects of scientific inquiry.

Understandings about scientific inquiry

• Different kinds of questions suggest different kinds of scientific investigations.
• Mathematics is important in all aspects of scientific inquiry.
• Scientific explanations use evidence, have logically consistent arguments, and use scientific principles, models, and theories.
• Science advances through legitimate skepticism.
• Scientific investigations sometimes result in new ideas and phenomena for study, generate new methods or procedures for investigation, or develop new technologies to improve the collection of data.

Physical Science

Properties and changes of properties in matter

• Substances, such as metals, are often placed in categories or groups if they react in similar ways.

Motions and forces

• The motion of an object can be described by its position, direction of motion, and speed.
• An object that is not being subjected to a force will continue to move at a constant speed.
• If more than one force acts on an object, then the forces will reinforce or cancel one another.

Transfer of energy

• Energy is a property of many substances and is associated with heat, light, electricity, and mechanical motion. Energy is transferred in many ways.
• Electrical circuits provide a means of transferring electrical energy when heat, light, sound, and chemical changes are produced.

Life Science

Regulation and behavior

• Behavior is one kind of response an organism can make to an internal or environmental stimulus. Behavioral response is a set of actions determined in part by heredity and in part from experience.

Science and Technology

Abilities of technological design

• Implement a proposed solution.
• Evaluate completed technological designs or products.

Understandings about science and technology

• Many different people have made and continue to make contributions to science and technology.
• Science and technology are reciprocal.
• Perfectly designed solutions do not exist. All solutions have trade-offs.

Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

Personal health

• The potential for accidents and the existence of hazards impose the need for injury prevention. Safe living involves the development and use of safety precautions and the recognition of risk in personal decisions. Injury prevention has social and personal dimensions.

Science and technology in society

• Science influences society through its knowledge and world view.
• Technology influences society through its products and processes.
• Science and technology have advanced through contributions of different people at different times in history.

History and Nature of Science

Science as a human endeavor

• Some scientists work in teams, and some work alone, but all communicate extensively with others.
• Science requires different abilities.

Nature of science

• Scientists formulate and test their explanations of nature using observations, experiments, and models.
• It is normal for scientists in certain situations to differ with one another about the interpretation of evidence.
• It is part of scientific inquiry to evaluate the result of scientific investigations, experiments, observations, models, and explanations proposed by others.

History of science

• Many individuals have contributed to the traditions of science.
• Tracing the history of science can show how difficult it was for scientific innovators to break through the accepted ideas of their time to reach conclusions we currently take for granted.

Unifying Concepts and Processes

Systems, order, and organization

Evidence, models, and explanation

Constancy, change, and measurement

Form and function