First Semester: Classroom rules and the nature of science

1. How do I enter the science classroom each day? (silently!)

2. What are the three tasks that I perform at the beginning of each class?(1. get started now, 2. copy homework into agenda, 3. make sure all supplies are on your desk and ready to use)

3. What items do I need to bring to science class each day? (notecards, pen, colored pencils or markers, your composition book if you took it home)

4. What are the things scientists do to find out about the world? (Exploration and Discovery,Testing Ideas, Community Analysis and Feedback)

5. What is the first thing I should do if there is an emergency in the class room? (tell the teacher)

6. Compare inferences to observations. ( Inference is what you think based on your observations; observations are what you do with your 5 senses.)

7. How is science studied? (by everyone everyday).

8. Compare qualitative to quantitative analysis. (Qualitative data are described with adjectives, quantitative data is described with numbers)

9. Explain DRY MIX. (Dependent, Responding, Y-axis and Manipulated, Independent, X-axis)

10. ASTRONOMY  What does astronomy mean? (the study of space and everything in it)

11. What did ancient Greek scientists use to investigate the universe? (their eyes! and some math...)

12. Describe the series of events that we refer to as The Big Bang Theory? (singularity, Big Bang, Universe shaped, basic elements form, expansion of energy (radiation) and stuff (matter), stars and galaxies form)

13. According The Big Bang Theory, what does The Universe continue to do to this day? (expand, with the evidence of red shift)

14. What evidence do we have of the Big Bang? (Cosmic Background Radiation, red shift)

15. What is the difference between Heliocentric and Geocentric? (Heliocentric means sun-centered, Geocentric means Earth-centered

16. How did the view of the solar system change over time? (the ancients thought the Earth was the center of the universe.  Currently, science has evidence we are in an arm of the Milky Way Galaxy in a solar system, on a chunk of rock three planets out from our sun)

17. What did the earliest astronomers think about the solar system and the universe? (they thought they were the same)

18. Define a light year. (the distance light travels in a year)

19. Draw a geocentric model and list the astronomers who support that theory. (be sure to include: Aristotle, Ptolemy, Brahe)

20. Draw a heliocentric model and list the astronomers who support that theory. (be sure to include: Aristarchus, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo) 

21. What is the speed of light?  (300,000,000 m/s)

22. List, in order of occurence: formation of the sun, big bang, spinning nebula, formation of the solar system. (big bang, spinning nebula, formation of the sun, formation of the solar system)

23. Put in order from smallest to largest:  galaxy, universe, Earth, sun, solar system, galaxy cluster (Earth, sun, solar system, galaxy, galaxy cluster, universe)

24. What is the difference between an asteroid, meteor, and comet?(Asteroids and meteors are rocky, and a comet is frozen, a mix of carbon dioxide, water, and dust/dirt.)

25. What is the difference between mass and weight? (mass is how much "stuff", or MATTER something has, weight is how much gravity pulls on your mass)

26. How is gravity affected by masses of objects and the distance between them? (more mass=more gravity; more distance=less gravity and vice versa)

27. By name, describe the progression of a rock as it enters the atmosphere. (Asteroids in space, meteors moving through the atmosphere, and meteorites on Earth)

28. Draw and label the parts of a comet orbiting the sun.  Explain the direction of the tail. (make sure your diagram has the nucleus, coma, and both ION and DUST tails pointing AWAY from the sun in a highly elliptical orbit)

29. EARTH SUN MOON  What does a revolution of the Earth cause, and how long is it? (one year, 365 days, also called an orbit)

30. Rotation of the Earth causes what? How long is that? (one day, 24 hours, remember the "A" in rotate!)

31. What causes the seasons (write the jingle)? (length of days, angle of rays, NOTHING to do with how far away).

32. Why can’t we see all the constellations when we look at the sky on one night? (because of the sun's light during the day prevents us from seeing the constellations that are on the opposite side of the sun from where the Earth is.)

33. What would happen if the Earth’s rotation increases in speed? (the day would get shorter)What if the revolution decreases in speed? (the year would get longer)

34. Write seasons concept map (completed) for summer. (on benches)

35. Write the seasons concept map (completed) for winter. (on benches)

36. Draw the positions of the Earth, sun and moon during a full moon. (should be in a line: S, E, then M)

37. Draw the positions of the Earth, sun and moon during a new moon. (in a line: S, M, then E)

38. What portion of the moon is lit at all times? (1/2)

39. What causes the different phases of the moon? (We see the lit side from different positions as it orbits)

40. What phase occurs 21-22 days after the new moon? (third quarter) Why? (because the moonth is 28 days long) 

41. Draw it as it looks from space and from Earth. (at a right angle: S, E, then M)Why do we always see the same side of the moon? (it rotates and revolves in the same amount of time)

42. GEOLOGY  Draw (and label with solid/liquid and metal/rock) the cross section of Earth with 6th grade layer names. (Lithosphere: solid rock, Asthenosphere: liquid, or plastic rock, Mesosphere: solid rock, Outer core: liquid metal, Inner core: solid metal)

43. What layers (exactly) of the Earth comprise the lithosphere? (the crust AND the uppermost part of the mantle, including the Mojo layer, named after the Croatian seismologist Andrija Mohorovicic)

44. What makes some parts of Earth solid even though they’re at higher temperatures (shouldn't they be molten?) than liquid layers? (pressure)

45. Draw an image of a convection current (labeled!) that shows what happens to the molecules as they move. (this image will be based on what you learned in lab, and should show heat rising, cooler materials sinking, and the plates moving accordingly)

46. Draw a picture of all four types of plate boundaries with the land forms they create.  (Divergent: mid-ocean ridges in oceanic crust, rift valleys in continental crust; Convergent: mountains; Transform: earthquakes, no land forms necessarily, but fault lines can be deep!; Subduction: deep sea trenches where the more dense plate moves under the less dense plate, and volcanoes on the less dense plate, and tsunamis happen here!)

47. Give the four points of evidence Wegener used to support his theory of continental drift.  ( 1.  puzzle piece continents  2. fossil patterns that fit in the puzzle pieces  3. climate evidence (ferns in Antarctica?!?!)  4.  rock formations that show the creatures to be contemporary across the oceans)

48. What is the evidence for sea-floor spreading and where is it? (At the mid-ocean ridge, the age of rocks is youngest, there are volcanoes at and around the divergent boundary, and magnetic stripes exist in the rocks as you move away from the ridge)

49. What causes continents to move? (convection currents in the mantle)

50. What is the difference between magma and lava?  (both are molten rock, but lava is at the surface, and magma is under it)

51. Describe the process that adds more crust at the mid-ocean ridge.  (Sea-floor spreading involves a divergent boundary where magma creates a ridge of volcanic, sometimes explosive, mountains deep in the ocean.  The rock at that seam is the youngest.  As you move from that hot, nutrient rich (did live EVOLVE there first?!?) area, the rock is progressively older.  The rocks also hold evidence of magnetic shifts in the core's field orientation.  There are stripes, or lateral patterns of changing magnetic direction as you move away from the center.)

52. Where do earthquakes occur in the United States and why?  (Earthquakes occur most often at transform plate boundaries, as pressure from moving plates build, the energy stored can accumulate to dangerous levels and cause more severe quakes. The current North American plate boundaries are at the mid-ocean ridge in the Atlantic (too far away for us to feel much) and the west coast of the continent, where it meets the Pacific and Juan de Fuca plates. Populations in California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska are most vulnerable to frequent, and sometimes deadly, movement. Volcanoes are also along the same boundary, as in some places, there is subduction, not just transform boundaries.)

53. List all the places volcanoes can occur and explain.  (Subduction zones create volcanoes on the less dense plate.  This is because the pressure from the subducting plate drives magma to the surface, and is often on continental crust.  Alternatively volcanoes can occur as island chains resulting from plate movement over a hot spot, which is NOT NECESSARILY associated with plate boundaries.  Examples of hot spot volcanoes include Hawaii, and Yellowstone, where a huge caldera lies under the surface of our North American plate. )

54. How are rocks classified? (by how they are formed)
    

55. How are igneous rocks formed? (melting, magma, cooling and hardening, igneous rock)
    

56. How are sedimentary rocks formed? (weathering and erosion, sediments, compaction and cementation, sedimentary rock)
    

57. how are metamorphic rocks formed? (extreme heat and pressure, metamorphic rock)
    

58. Why won't we ever run out of each of the three types of rocks (you need to describe THREE different explanations)? (plate movement for igneous and metamorphic, original heat and radioactivity for metamorphic, weathering and erosion for sedimentary)
    

59. Why don't we use months, years, centuries, or millennia when describing the history of Earth and the geology we're learning? (those units would be too small.  It would be like measuring a light year with a meter stick.)

60. SECOND SEMESTER  What is a rock made of? (minerals: the "building blocks" of rocks!)
    

61. What is a mineral?(a naturally occurring, inorganic solid with a distinct chemical composition and definite crystal structure )
    

62. How are minerals identified?  (color, texture, luster, fracture/cleavage, hardness on the MOH'S scale, transparency, crystal shape, streak, magnetism, reaction with acids, double refraction)
    

63. Name six common minerals & describe how they are used.(Sulfur: fireworks, Iron: construction, Talc: baby powder, Diamonds: decoration, Magnetite: orientation, Halite: seasoning, Fluorite: tooth protection, Graphite: art/writing, Copper: plumbing/construction)

64.  What is an ore? (the valuable part of the Earth when you're mining.  The rest is called "gangue".)

65. What is a natural resource? (a material or method by which we get energy)

66. List four renewable and 4 non-renewable natural resources. (Renewable: solar, geothermal, wind, hydro-electric.  Non-renewable: all three fossil fuels, gas, oil and coal, and nuclear energy)

67. What are the problems with changing from one natural resource to another? (all the infrastructure for what we use is in place, and people are resistant to change, particularly when they're at risk of loosing money)

68. How can fossil fuels be connected to the energy of the sun? Hydro-electric? Geothermal? Nuclear energy? (all energy comes from the sun.  The fossils in fossil fuels got their energy from the sun when the plants and animals that became the fuels were alive.  Hydro-electric depends on the energy from the water cycle, which is powered by the sun.  Nuclear energy is from materials that were created as a result of the sun's nebula.)

69. Define weathering and give an example. (Breaking down of materials, ice wedging breaks rocks)

70. Define erosion and give an example.(Movement of the broken parts of materials, wind water and ice can erode)

71. Distinguish between the two types of weathering and how are they different?(Chemical changes the material, physical changes the size/shape of the material)

72. How is erosion related to natural resources? (when we mine for materials, erosion happens)

73. Connect the energy from non-renewable resources to the sun (the original source of all energy). (coal, gas, and oil are all fossil fuels: from plants and animals that once depended on the sun to survive, and their bodies have the energy trapped in them from when they were alive)

74. Connect the energy from renewable resources to the sun. (solar; direct, wind; moving air particles because of heat from the sun, hydroelectric; water cycle runs because of the heat from the sun, biofuels; all from materials that were once alive because of the sun, geothermal; heat from the original formation of the Earth, which was a result of the formation of the sun)

75. What makes a V-shaped valley? U-shaped? (v=river, u=glacier)

76. What is a topographic map? (a map that shows 3-D features in a 2-D format)

77. What is a contour line? How can you use them? (lines that connect points of equal elevation, they can show you how steep/gradual the terrain changes are in an area)

78. What is the contour interval? (the amount of elevation change from one contour line to an adjacent one)

79. What do you know about the terrain if the contour lines are far apart? (the land experiences a gradual slope)

    Close together? (steep slope)

80. What is an index contour? (darker contour line with the elevation on it)

81.  Define elevation. (distance from sea level)

82. How does the water cycle remove contaminants from water? (only water evaporates) 

83. Define: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, infiltration, sublimation, and run-off. (evaporation: liquid to gas, condensation: gas to liquid, precipitation: falling to Earth, infiltration: sinking into ground, sublimation: solid to gas, run-off: moving over the ground)

84. List all places water is stored. (the oceans, lakes, seas, rivers, aquifers, plants and animals)

85.  What is an estuary?(where the river meets the sea)

86. What does brackish mean? (mix of salt and fresh water)

87. What is salinity? (amount of salt in the water)

88.  How does salinity change with the seasons? (heat causes evaporation, which makes it saltier, cold causes freezing, which can also make it saltier, but precipitation can cause it to be fresher.  all of these things change seasonally)

89.  What do ppm and ppt mean? and how many ppm salinity is acceptable to drink? (ppm: parts per million, ppt: parts per thousand, 30 ppm.

90.  What is the atmosphere made of (give details and proportions)? (This is the pie chart with the percentages of the gases in the atmosphere: 78% Nitrogen, 21%, 1% is a mix of other gases, including, water, carbon dioxide, argon, etc...)

91.  What changes occur as you leave Earth and enter space? (Temperature and density.  If you don't know how they change, you need to re-read the Atmosphere reading)

92.  List, describe (temperature, density and characteristics/things that happen there) and compare the dimensions of all the layers of the atmosphere.(It gets colder and warmer alternately, and at every temperature inversion there's a new layer.  It also gets less and less dense as you move out into space, so the highest pressure is close to the Earth, and the least is in the exosphere.  This is the chart you graphed and decorated with the names and relevant points, like where meteors happen, for EVERY layer.  Don't forget ionosphere and exosphere, otherwise everything you need is in the Atmosphere reading)

93.  What is a temperature inversion? (when the trend moves from cooling to warming, or vice versa)

94. What is the difference between weather and climate? (weather is short-term, climate is long-term changes in the condition of the atmosphere in the troposphere in a particular area)

95. What are clouds, and why do they form? (condensed, liquid, water held up by warm air currents)

    96. What is the instrument we measure air pressure with? (barometer)

    97. What is the amount of pressure air puts on you here on Earth? (14 pounds per square inch)

    98. What direction(s) does air pressure "push"? (ALL directions!)

    99. How does air pressure change as you go up in the atmosphere? (it decreases as you increase altitude)

    100. Why do our bodies not collapse under the pressure from the atmosphere? (because the air in our bodies pushes back)

    101. What are the three types of heat transfer? Describe them. (radiation: through space, conduction: through touch, convection: through a fluid)

    102. What are the three conditions for cloud formation? (lower the pressure, lower the temperature, and have condensation nuclei)

    103. What causes wind? (HORIZONTALLY MOVING AIR MOLECULES!)

    104. What kind of pressure does wind move FROM? TO? (FROM HIGH TO LOW!)

    105. What happens to the molecules in air as they are heated? Cooled? (Heated molecules rise, and are less dense, cooled molecules sink and are more dense)

    106. What is density? Give the formula. (Density is the amount of stuff in a certain amount of space.  D=M/V)

    107. What is relative humidity? (A measure of how much water vapor is actually in the air compared to the maximum amount of water vapor that can be in the air at a given temperature, the difference between the dry bulb and the wet bulb is how you determine the % humidity)

    108. List and describe fronts. (Cold front: designated by the "biting teeth" triangles, Warm front: designated by the "fluffy blanket" scallops, Stationary: designated by the alternating triangles and scallops on opposite sides of the line, Occluded: designated by the triangles and scallops on the same side; make sure you have the diagrams like pp.446-447 in the text.)
    

    109. List and describe the types of air masses. (Continental tropical:dry and warm, Continental polar: dry and cold, Maritime tropical: wet and warm, Maritime polar: wet and cold) 

    110. How does the tilt of the Earth affect the seasons and climate? ( if the planet wasn't tilted, we would never have a change of seasons, and the climate would be consistent throughout the year at any latitude depending on where you were relative to sea or land)

    111. How does the sun's heating of water in the tropics affect climate in the rest of the world? (Water that is warm is less dense and rises, which makes it spread toward the poles where it warms the air before it sinks after becoming cold, which causes the oceans to mix, and currents to flow.  Currents are what changes climate around the planet: the British Isles would be much colder were it not for the Gulf Stream)

    112. What happens to water after it evaporates from oceans and off the land? (it enters the water cycle by becoming a gas and can then become a cloud, or dew, or fog before it returns to the land or oceans)

    113. How does the sun's energy cause winds and hurricanes? (uneven heating of the earth causes wind, and the sun's radiation causes uneven heating of the planet.  Hurricanes depend on warm water as "fuel", and the ocean absorbs radiation from the sun as does the land.)

    114. Differentiate between a riptide, longshore current, and an upwelling. (a riptide: water is moving toward shore and then turning back out to sea in a hairpin turn. longshore current: water is moving parallel to the shore.  upwelling is a movement of water toward the surface from deeper in the sea). 

    115. Describe global ocean currents with respect to temperature, salinity, and density. (cold, salty currents, which are more dense, are moving generally from the poles towards the equator.  warm, fresher currents, which are less dense, are moving generally from the equator to the poles. The directions are NOT straight, because of the effect of winds & landforms)

    116. Explain why tides happen and draw the difference between neap and spring tides

    117. Draw and label all ocean floor features (include AT LEAST: continental shelf, continental slope, abyssal plain, volcanic island, seamount, mid-ocean ridge, and deep-sea trench).