Light and Energy
This term refers to light passing completely through a medium, like looking through a clear glass window.
What is transmission?
This type of heat transfer occurs through direct contact, like burning your hand on a hot pan.
What is conduction?
This primary driver of the water cycle provides the thermal energy needed to evaporate water from Earth's oceans and lakes.
What is the Sun?
This giant "supercontinent" existed about 300 million years ago before breaking apart into the continents we recognize today.
What is Pangea?
This flexible barrier surrounds all cells, regulating what enters and exits to maintain internal balance.
What is the cell membrane?
When light strikes a dark, opaque object and is transformed into thermal energy, this interaction has occurred.
What is absorption?
This term describes the temperature at which all molecular motion stops, equivalent to 0 Kelvin.
What is absolute zero?
This process occurs when plants release water vapor into the atmosphere through tiny pores in their leaves, significantly influencing local climates.
What is transpiration?
This is the name for the type of plate boundary where two plates slide past one another horizontally, often triggering earthquakes like those along the San Andreas Fault.
What is a transform boundary?
Known as the "powerhouse" of the cell, this organelle converts nutrients into energy through cellular respiration.
What is the mitochondrion?
This happens to light waves when they travel from one medium to another and change speed, which is why a pencil looks bent in a glass of water.
What is refraction?
This method of heat transfer does not require a medium, allowing thermal energy from the Sun to travel through the vacuum of space to Earth.
What is radiation?
This dense, biodiverse ecosystem type requires high levels of annual precipitation and is heavily sustained by constant warmth and moisture.
What is a rainforest?
These circular currents within the Earth's mantle are the primary engine that drives the movement of tectonic plates.
What are convection currents?
These small, grainy structures are the sites of protein synthesis, often found floating in the cytoplasm or attached to the endoplasmic reticulum.
What are ribosomes?
These materials scatter light as it passes through, allowing you to see light but not a clear image on the other side.
What is translucent?
A sealed bottle of water is a classic example of this type of system, which allows heat to be exchanged but prevents matter from escaping.
What is a closed system?
This forms when strong thunderstorm updrafts repeatedly carry raindrops into freezing layers of the atmosphere, adding layers of ice before they fall to Earth.
What is hail?
This specific ocean basin is home to approximately 80% of all tsunamis due to the high concentration of tectonic activity in the "Ring of Fire".
What is the Pacific Ocean?
During the clotting process, these cell fragments gather at the site of a cut to form a "plug," preventing further blood loss.
What are platelets?
Extending from the back of the eye directly to the brain, this bundle of more than one million nerve fibers carries visual messages from the retina to the visual cortex.
What is the optic nerve?
This specific phase change occurs when a gas transitions directly into a solid, skipping the liquid phase entirely, as seen in the formation of frost.
What is deposition?
This side of a mountain range, facing away from the prevailing wind, receives very little precipitation because the air has already dropped its moisture on the opposite side.
What is the leeward side?
Evidence that the summit of Mt. Everest was once at the bottom of the ocean can be found in its layers of this sedimentary rock, which contain ancient marine fossils.
What is limestone?
These green, bean-shaped organelles contain chlorophyll and are the site where light energy is converted into chemical energy.
What are chloroplasts?