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.
• Recognize and analyze alternative explanations and predictions.
• Communicate scientific procedures and explanations.
• Mathematics is used 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.

Physical Science

Properties and changes of properties in matter

• A substance has characteristic properties.

Science and Technology

Abilities of technological design

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

Understandings about science and technology

• Scientific inquiry and technological design have similarities and differences.
• Many different people in different cultures have made and continue to make contributions to science and technology.
• Science and technology are reciprocal.
• Perfect design solutions do not exist. All technological solutions have trade-offs, such as safety, cost, efficiency, and appearance.
• Technological designs have constraints.
• Technological solutions have intended benefits and unintended consequences.

Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

Natural hazards

• Human activities can induce hazards through resource acquisition, urban growth, land-use decisions, and waste disposal.

Science and technology in society

• 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.
• Scientists and engineers work in many different settings, including colleges and universities, businesses and industries, research institutes, and government agencies.
• Science cannot answer all questions and technology cannot solve all human problems or meet all human needs.

History and Nature of Science

Science as a human endeavor

• Women and men of various social and ethnic backgrounds—and with diverse interests, talents, qualities, and motivations—engage in the activities of science, engineering, and related fields.
• Science requires different abilities, depending on such factors as the field of study and type of inquiry.

Nature of science

• Scientists formulate and test their explanations of nature using observation, experiments, and theoretical and mathematical models.
• 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

Evidence, models, and explanation

Constancy, change, and measurement

Form and function