Fundamental Concepts and Principles Addressed (5-8)

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. Some investigations involve observing and describing objects or organisms; some involve experiments; and some involve discovery of new objects.
• Mathematics is important in all aspects of scientific inquiry.
• Scientific explanations emphasize evidence, have logically consistent arguments, and use scientific principles, models, and theories.

Properties and changes of properties in matter

• A substance has characteristic properties, such as density, a boiling point, and solubility, all of which are independent of the amount of the sample.

Motion and forces

• If more than one force acts on an object along a straight line, then the forces will reinforce or cancel one another, depending on their direction and magnitude.

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.

Understandings about science and technology

• Scientists propose explanations for questions about the natural world, and engineers propose solutions relating to human problems, needs, and aspirations.
• Many different people in different cultures have made and continue to make contributions to science and technology.
• Science and technology are reciprocal. Science helps drive technology, as it addresses questions that demand more sophisticated instruments and provides principles for better instrumentation and technique.
• Perfectly designed solutions do not exist; all solutions have trade-offs.

Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

Personal health

• Safe living involves the development and use of safety precautions and the recognition of risk in personal decisions. Injury prevention has personal and social dimensions.

Science and technology in society

• Science and technology have advanced through contributions of many different people, in different cultures, at different times in history.

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. Some scientists work in teams, others alone, but all communicate with one another.
• Science requires different abilities, depending on such factors as the field of study and type of inquiry. Science is very much a human endeavor and relies on human qualities and habits of the mind.

Nature of science

• Scientists formulate and test their explanations of nature using observation, experiments, and theoretical and mathematical models. Scientists change their ideas when led to do so by experimental evidence.
• Different scientists might draw different conclusions from the same data.
• It is part of scientific inquiry to evaluate the results of scientific investigations, experiments, and observations.

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.

Unifying Concepts and Processes

Systems, order, and organization

Evidence, models, and explanation

Constancy, change, and measurement

Evolution and equilibrium

Form and function