Thermal Energy (6th)
The process of water changing from a liquid to a gas as it enters the atmosphere from Earth's surface.
What is evaporation?
The basic structural and functional unit of all living organisms.
What is a cell?
This positively charged subatomic particle is found inside the nucleus of an atom and determines the element's atomic number.
What is a proton?
Represented by the symbol O, this element makes up about 21% of Earth's atmosphere and is vital for human respiration.
What is Oxygen?
Newton's First Law of Motion states that an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by this type of force.
What is an unbalanced force (or net force)?
The transfer of thermal energy through direct contact between particles of matter.
What is conduction?
The theory explaining that Earth's outer shell is divided into large, moving slabs that interact at boundaries.
What is plate tectonics?
These negatively charged subatomic particles orbit the nucleus and are involved in chemical bonding.
What are electrons?
Rows on the periodic table are called periods, while the vertical columns are known by this name and group elements with similar chemical properties.
What are groups (or families)?
This molecule, structured as a double helix, carries the genetic instructions used in the growth and reproduction of all living organisms.
What is DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid)?
This type of thermal energy transfer moves heat through liquids and gases via density-driven currents.
What is convection?
This layer of Earth's atmosphere is where almost all weather occurs and contains the majority of its water vapor.
What is the troposphere?
Formed when two or more atoms chemically bond together (like H20 and or CO2), this is the smallest fundamental unit of a chemical compound.
What is a molecule?
Elements on the periodic table are broadly classified into three categories: metals, nonmetals, and a middle category that shares properties of both. What is the name of that middle category?
What are metalloids (or semimetals)?
Unlike mechanical waves, these waves do not require a physical medium to travel and can move through the vacuum of space.
What are electromagnetic waves (or light waves)?
As the kinetic energy of the molecules in a substance increases, this property of the substance also increases.
What is temperature?
When a warm air mass collides with and rises over a cold air mass, it forms this type of boundary, often bringing steady rain.
What is a warm front?
Unlike physical changes, this type of change results in the formation of entirely new substances with different properties (e.g., rusting iron or burning wood).
What is a chemical change?
This unreactive group of elements found in Column 18 includes helium, neon, and argon.
What are noble gases?
The mechanism driven by environmental pressures, where organisms with traits better suited to their environment survive and reproduce.
What is natural selection?
Unequal heating of the Earth's surface by the Sun creates global wind patterns and differences in atmospheric pressure known as this.
What is atmospheric circulation (or air pressure gradients)?
Earth's crust is continuously recycled at subduction zones where one plate slides beneath another into this middle layer of the Earth.
What is the mantle?
Atoms of the same element that have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons are called...
What are isotopes?
Taking its symbol Fe from the Latin word ferrum, this abundant metal element formed the backbone of the American Industrial Revolution.
What is Iron?
The strength of the gravitational force between two objects depends on two main factors: the distance between them and this property.
What is mass?