Defining Life
The basic structural and functional unit of all organisms, bounded by a thin plasma membrane
What is a cell?
Formatted typically as an "if-then" statement, this educated guess can be rejected or supported but never proven 100% correct
What is a hypothesis?
This is the only evolutionary process that yields biological adaptations
What is natural selection?
This subatomic particle has a negligible mass and a -1 charge, and resides in orbitals surrounding the nucleus
What is an electron?
The biological terms for "water-loving" charged/polar substances and "water-fearing" uncharged/nonpolar substances
What are hydrophilic and hydrophobic?
At the cellular level, this chemical energy molecule is required by organisms to sustain life and reproduce
What is ATP (adenosine triphosphate)?
These two types of subjective assessments fall completely outside the objective realm of science
What are value judgments and subjective information?
In taxonomy, this is the general term used for any named group at any level of classification
What is a taxon?
The overall net electric charge of an ion that contains 7 protons and 6 electrons
What is +1?
This type of covalent bond occurs when electrons are shared unevenly between atoms, creating partial positive and partial negative charges
What is a polar covalent bond?
The basic goal to which everything an organism does contributes, which can occur through meiosis, mitosis, or mating
What is replication/reproduction?
Backed by a wide body of evidence, this provides the most logical explanation of why things happen in nature, though it will never become a law
What is a scientific theory?
The term for a heritable trait that increases an individual's fitness in a certain environment
What is an adaptation?
Versions of an element that have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons
What are isotopes?
These weak electrical attractions form when the partial negative charge on oxygen in one water molecule attracts the partial positive charge on hydrogen in another
What are hydrogen bonds?
This framework describes the one-way flow of genetic information: DNA is copied to RNA, which is read to make proteins
What is the central dogma?
This specific type of variable is the one that is directly controlled by the investigator in an experiment
What is the independent variable?
This is defined as the ability of an organism to survive, reproduce, and have its offspring be viable
What is fitness?
The stable number of valence electrons an atom's outermost shell aims to have under the octet rule
What is eight (8)?
This atomic property refers to an atom's power to pull shared electrons toward itself in a covalent bond
What is electronegativity?
Organisms process internal information to restore this stable state, which is a classic example of responding to internal stimuli
Unlike theories, scientific laws describe observed phenomena and tend to have this type of component associated with them
What is a mathematical proof (or mathematical component)?
Developed by Carolus Linnaeus, this universal naming system capitalizes the Genus, lowercases the specific epithet, and italicizes both
What is binomial nomenclature?
This chemical value represents the number of protons and neutrons in an atom, which each weigh approximately one dalton
What is the mass number?
This group of elements, on the far right side of the table, contain a full valence shell naturally
What are the noble gasses?