Unifying Concepts and Processes

• Systems, order and organization
• Evidence, models and explanation
• Form and Function

Content Standard A

• Students should develop abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry.
  • Identify questions that can be answered through scientific investigations.
• Students should 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.
• Students should develop understandings about scientific inquiry.
  • Current scientific knowledge and understanding guide scientific investigations.
  • Technology used to gather data enhances accuracy and allows scientists to analyze and quantify results of investigation.
  • Scientific explanations emphasize evidence, have logically consistent arguments, and use scientific principles, models, and theories.
  • Scientific investigations sometimes result in new ideas and phenomena for study....

Content Standard B: Physical Science

• All students should develop an understanding of motions and forces.
  • The motion of an object can be described by its position, direction of motion, and speed.
  • An object that is not being subjected to a force will continue to move at a con-stant speed and in a straight line.
  • 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. Unbalanced forces will cause changes in the speed or direction of an object'9s motion.

Content Standard E: Science and Technology

• All students should develop understandings about science and technology.
  • Science and technology are reciprocal.
  • Perfectly designed solutions do not exist.
  • Technological designs have restraints.
  • Technological solutions have intended benefits and unintended consequences. Some consequences can be predicted, others cannot.

Content Standard F: Science in Personal and Social Perspectives

• All students should develop an understanding of science and technology in society.
  • Science influences society through its knowledge and world view.
  • Societal challenges often inspire questions for scientific research....
  • Technology influences society through its products and processes.
  • Scientists and engineers work in many different settings....

Content Standard G: History and Nature of Science

• All students should develop understanding of science as a human endeavor.
  • Women and men of various social and ethnic backgrounds...engage in the activities of science, engineering.... Some scientists work in teams, and some work alone, but all communicate extensively with others.
  • Science requires different abilities, depending on such factors as the field of study and type of inquiry.
• All students should develop understanding of the 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.