Science as Inquiry

Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry

• Identify questions that can be answered through scientific inquiry.
• 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.
• Recognize and analyze alternative explanations and predictions.
• 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.
• Current scientific knowledge and understanding guide scientific investigations.
• Mathematics is important in all aspects of scientific inquiry.
• Scientific explanations emphasize 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 an investigation, or develop new technologies to improve the collection of data.

Motions and forces

• The motion of an object can be described by its position, direction of motion, and speed. That motion can be measured and represented on a graph.

Transfer of energy

• Energy is a property of many substances. It is, for example, associated with mechanical motion.
• The sun is a major source of energy. The sun loses energy by emitting light. A tiny fraction of that light reaches the earth, transferring energy from the sun to the earth. The sun’s energy arrives as light and consists of visible light, infrared, and ultraviolet radiation.

Earth in the solar system

• Most objects in the solar system are in regular and predictable motion. Those motions explain such phenomena as the day, the year, phases of the moon, and eclipses.

Abilities of technological design

• Identify appropriate problems for technological design.
• Design a solution or product.
• Implement a proposed solution.
• Evaluate completed technological designs or products.
• Communicate the process of technological design.

Understandings about science and technology

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

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 many different people, in different cultures, at different times in history.

Science as a human endeavor

• Women and men of various backgrounds engage in the activities of science. Some scientists work in teams and some work alone, but all communicate extensively with others.
• Science requires different abilities. Science is very much a human endeavor, and the work of science relies on basic human qualities and scientific habits of mind.

Nature of science

• Scientists formulate and test their explanations of nature using observation, experiments, and theoretical and mathematical models.
• Different scientists might draw different conclusions from the same data. Ideally, scientists acknowledge such conflict and work towards finding evidence that will resolve their disagreement.
• It is part of scientific inquiry to evaluate the results of scientific investigations, experiments, observations, theoretical models, and the explanations proposed by other scientists.

History of science

• Many individuals have contributed to the traditions of science.
• In historical perspective, science has been practiced by different individuals in different cultures.
• 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 the conclusions that we currently take for granted.

Unifying Concepts and Processes

Systems, order, and organization

Evidence, models, and explanation

Constancy, change, and measurement

Form and function