Patterns of Earth & Sky
This force pulls objects straight down toward the center of the Earth.
What is gravity?
This sphere includes all of Earth's liquid water, ice, and water vapor.
What is the hydrosphere?
This is the smallest piece of matter that is too small to see.
What is a molecule (or particle)?
These organisms, such as plants, use sunlight to make their own food matter.
What are producers?
This is a representation of something that is too big, too small, or too complex to study directly in the real world.
What is a model?
The Sun appears to rise in the east and set in the west because of this specific movement of the Earth.
What is Earth's rotation (spinning on its axis)?
This sphere represents all living things on Earth, from plants to humans.
What is the biosphere?
When a solid totally disappears into a liquid to form a clear mixture, it has done this.
What is dissolved?
Animals cannot make their own food, so they must get their matter and energy by eating other organisms, making them this.
What are consumers?
A general statement or a guess about what might happen in the future based on observations or data.
What is a prediction?
The Sun appears much brighter and larger than other stars because of this specific reason.
What is its distance? (The Sun is much closer to Earth than any other star).
When water vapor cools down and turns back into liquid water droplets to form clouds, it undergoes this process.
What is condensation?
This term describes a completely new substance formed when two or more different substances are mixed together and their molecules rearrange.
What is a chemical reaction?
These organisms break down dead plants and animals, returning important nutrients back into the soil.
What are decomposers?
Scientists often use computer simulations or physical models to help them __________ how invisible water molecules move in the atmosphere or how energy flows through an ecosystem.
What is visualize?
We see different constellations in the night sky at different times of the year because of this yearly movement of Earth.
What is Earth's revolution (orbiting the Sun)?
This is the primary source of energy that drives the entire Earth water cycle.
What is the Sun?
To determine if an unknown liquid is water or a different clear substance, scientists test its distinct traits, which are called these.
What are properties?
This is the original source of all the energy that enters a localized ecosystem food web.
What is the Sun?
Making a chart, a bar graph, or a table is a common way for scientists to organize and display their collected __________.
What is data?
To an observer on Earth, a star's position looks like it changes throughout the night because this object is spinning.
What is Earth?
Rain shadow effects occur when moisture-rich air is forced upward by this specific Earth sphere, causing rain on one side and a desert on the other.
What is the geosphere (or mountains)?
This is what happens to the weight of a substance when it dissolves into a liquid and becomes invisible.
What is it stays the same? (The total weight of the mixture is equal to the weight of the solid plus the liquid).
In a healthy ecosystem, this type of invisible gas is taken in by plants during photosynthesis and released by animals during respiration.
What is carbon dioxide?
This is a careful study, experiment, or test that scientists do to answer a question or solve a problem.
What is an investigation?