1: Earth and Space Sciences

1.C: Describe interactions of matter and energy throughout the lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere (e.g., water cycle, weather and pollution).

1.C.1: Explain the biogeochemical cycles which move materials between the lithosphere (land), hydrosphere (water) and atmosphere (air).

Cell Energy Cycle

1.C.2: Explain that Earth's capacity to absorb and recycle materials naturally (e.g., smoke, smog, sewage) can change the environmental quality depending on the length of time involved (e.g. global warming).

Coral Reefs 1 - Abiotic Factors
Greenhouse Effect

1.C.3: Describe the water cycle and explain the transfer of energy between the atmosphere and hydrosphere.

Water Cycle

1.C.4: Analyze data on the availability of fresh water that is essential for life and for most industrial and agricultural processes. Describe how rivers, lakes and groundwater can be depleted or polluted becoming less hospitable to life and even becoming unavailable or unsuitable for life.

Pond Ecosystem
Water Pollution

1.C.6: Determine how weather observations and measurements are combined to produce weather maps and that data for a specific location at one point in time can be displayed in a station model.

Weather Maps

1.C.7: Read a weather map to interpret local, regional and national weather.

Hurricane Motion
Weather Maps

1.C.9: Describe the connection between the water cycle and weather-related phenomenon (e.g., tornadoes, floods, droughts, hurricanes).

Water Cycle

2: Life Sciences

2.B: Describe the characteristics of an organism in terms of a combination of inherited traits and recognize reproduction as a characteristic of living organisms essential to the continuation of the species.

2.B.8: Investigate the great diversity among organisms.

Coral Reefs 1 - Abiotic Factors

2.C: Explain how energy entering the ecosystems as sunlight supports the life of organisms through photosynthesis and the transfer of energy through the interactions of organisms and the environment.

2.C.2: Investigate how organisms or populations may interact with one another through symbiotic relationships and how some species have become so adapted to each other that neither could survive without the other (e.g., predator-prey, parasitism, mutualistism, commensalism).

Evolution: Mutation and Selection
Evolution: Natural and Artificial Selection
Food Chain
Natural Selection
Prairie Ecosystem

2.C.3: Explain how the number of organisms an ecosystem can support depends on adequate biotic (living) resources (e.g., plants, animals) and abiotic (non-living) resources (e.g., light, water, soil).

Food Chain
Pond Ecosystem
Rabbit Population by Season

2.C.7: Explain that photosynthetic cells convert solar energy into chemical energy that is used to carry on life functions or is transferred to consumers and used to carry on their life functions.

Cell Energy Cycle
Food Chain
Forest Ecosystem
Photosynthesis Lab

3: Physical Sciences

3.A: Relate uses, properties and chemical processes to the behavior and/or arrangement of the small particles that compose matter.

3.A.1: Investigate how matter can change forms but the total amount of matter remains constant.

Chemical Equations

3.D: Describe that energy takes many forms, some forms represent kinetic energy and some forms represent potential energy; and during energy transformations the total amount of energy remains constant.

3.D.2: Describe how an object can have potential energy due to its position or chemical composition and can have kinetic energy due to its motion.

Air Track
Energy of a Pendulum
Inclined Plane - Sliding Objects
Potential Energy on Shelves
Roller Coaster Physics

3.D.3: Identify different forms of energy (e.g., electrical, mechanical, chemical, thermal, nuclear, radiant and acoustic).

Energy Conversion in a System
Energy of a Pendulum
Heat Absorption
Herschel Experiment
Inclined Plane - Sliding Objects
Radiation
Roller Coaster Physics

3.D.4: Explain how energy can change forms but the total amount of energy remains constant.

Air Track
Energy Conversion in a System
Energy of a Pendulum
Inclined Plane - Sliding Objects
Roller Coaster Physics

3.D.5: Trace energy transformation in a simple closed system (e.g., a flashlight).

Energy Conversion in a System
Inclined Plane - Sliding Objects