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- Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions
and conducting careful investigations. As a basis for understanding
this concept and addressing the content in the other four strands,
students should develop their own questions and perform investigations.
Students will:
- Select and use appropriate tools and technology (such
as computer-linked probes, spreadsheets, and graphing calculators)
to perform tests, collect data, analyze relationships, and
display data.
- Identify and communicate sources of unavoidable experimental
error.
- Identify possible reasons for inconsistent results, such
as sources of error or uncontrolled conditions.
- Formulate explanations by using logic and evidence.
- Solve scientific problems by using quadratic equations
and simple trigonometric, exponential, and logarithmic functions.
- Distinguish between hypothesis and theory as scientific
terms.
- Recognize the usefulness and limitations of models and
theories as scientific representations of reality.
- Read and interpret topographic and geologic maps.
- Analyze the locations, sequences, or time intervals that
are characteristic of natural phenomena (e.g., relative
ages of rocks, locations of planets over time, and succession
of species in an ecosystem).
- Recognize the issues of statistical variability and the
need for controlled tests.
- Recognize the cumulative nature of scientific evidence.
- Analyze situations and solve problems that require combining
and applying concepts from more than one area of science.
- Investigate a science-based societal issue by researching
the literature, analyzing data, and communicating the findings.
Examples of issues include irradiation of food, cloning
of animals by somatic cell nuclear transfer, choice of energy
sources, and land and water use decisions in California.
- Know that when an observation does not agree with an
accepted scientific theory, the observation is sometimes
mistaken or fraudulent (e.g., the Piltdown Man fossil or
unidentified flying objects) and that the theory is sometimes
wrong (e.g., the Ptolemaic model of the movement of the
Sun, Moon, and planets).
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