| A | B |
|---|
| Attraction | The electric or magnetic force exerted by oppositely charged particles, tending to draw or hold the particles together. |
| Axis | The imaginary line on which an object rotates (e.g., Earth’s axis runs through Earth between the North Pole and the South Pole); an imaginary straight line that runs through a body; a reference to the line in a coordinate system or graph. |
| Base | A substance that increases the OH– concentration of a solution; a proton acceptor. |
| Conductor | A material or an object that conducts heat, electricity, light, or sound. |
| Conservation of Mass | The principle that mass cannot be created or destroyed; also conservation of matter. |
| Consumer | An organism that feeds on other organisms for food. |
| Electricity | The physical phenomena arising from the behavior of electrons and protons that is caused by the attraction of particles with opposite charges and the repulsion of particles with the same charge. |
| Energy | The capacity to do work. |
| Environment | The sum of conditions affecting an organism, including all living and nonliving things in an area, such as plants, animals, water, soil, weather, landforms, and air. |
| Erosion | The wearing away of Earth’s surface by the breakdown and transportation of rock and soil. |
| Experiment | A procedure that is carried out and repeated under controlled conditions in order to discover, demonstrate, or test a hypothesis. |
| Fertilization | The act or process of initiating biological reproduction by insemination or pollination. |
| Food chain | Transfer of energy through various stages as a result of feeding patterns of organisms. |
| Force | A vector quantity that exists between two objects and, when unbalanced by another force, causes changes in velocity of objects in the direction of its application; a push or pull. |
| Galaxy | A large collection of stars, gases, and dust that are part of the universe (e.g., the Milky Way galaxy) bound together by gravitational forces. |
| Germination | The beginning of growth, as of a seed, spore, or bud. The germination of most seeds and spores occurs in response to warmth and water. |
| Gravity | The force of attraction between any two objects. |
| Heat | Energy that transfers between substances because of a temperature difference between the substances; the transfer of energy is always from the warmer substance to the cooler substance |
| Heredity | The passage of biological traits or characteristics from parents to offspring through the inheritance of genes. |
| Hypothesis | A tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation. |
| Igneous | A type of rock that forms from molten or partly molten material that cools and hardens. |
| Inference | The act of reasoning from factual knowledge or evidence. |
| Investigation | A systematic process that uses various types of data and logic and reasoning to better understand something or answer a question. |
| Law | A statement that describes invariable relationships among phenomena under a specified set of conditions. |
| Life cycle | The entire sequence of events in an organism’s growth, development, and reproduction. |
| Light | Electromagnetic radiation that lies within the visible range. |
| Liquid | One of the fundamental states of matter with a definite volume but no definite shape. |
| Magnet | An object that produces a magnetic field and that has the property, either natural or induced, of attracting iron or steel. |
| Magnetic | Having the property of attracting iron and certain other materials by virtue of a field of force. |
| Mass | The amount of matter an object contains. |
| Matter | Substance that possesses inertia and occupies space, of which all objects are constituted. |
| Metal | Any of a category of electropositive elements that usually have a shiny surface, are generally good conductors of heat and electricity, and can be melted or fused, hammered into thin sheets, or drawn into wires. |
| Metamorphic | A type of rock that forms from existing rock because of extreme changes caused by heat, pressure, or chemical environments. |
| Metamorphosis | Change in the form and often the habits of an animal during its development after birth or hatching. The transformation of a maggot into an adult fly and of a tadpole into an adult frog are examples of metamorphosis. |
| Mineral | A naturally occurring, homogeneous inorganic solid substance having a definite chemical composition and characteristic crystalline structure, color, and hardness. |
| Model | A systematic description of an object or phenomenon that shares important characteristics with the object or phenomenon. Scientific models can be material, visual, mathematical, or computational and are often used in the construction of scientific theories. |
| Moon | A natural satellite that revolves around a planet. |
| Motion | The act or process of changing position and/or direction. |
| Natural resource | Something, such as a forest, a mineral deposit, or fresh water, that is found in nature and is necessary or useful to humans. |
| Objectivity | Expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations. |
| Observation | What one has observed using senses or instruments. |
| Offspring | The progeny or descendants of an animal or plant considered as a group. |
| Organism | An individual form of life of one or more cells that maintains various vital processes necessary for life. |
| Pollen | Powdery grains that contain the male reproductive cells of seed plants. |
| Pollination | The process by which plant pollen is transferred from the male reproductive organs to the female reproductive organs to form seeds. In flowering plants, pollen is transferred from the anther to the stigma by vectors such as the wind or insects. |
| Pollution | Any alteration of the natural environment producing a condition harmful to living organisms; may occur naturally or as a result of human activities. |
| Producer | An organism, usually a plant or bacterium, that produces organic compounds from simple inorganic molecules and energy (typically light energy) from the environment. |
| Recycling | The collection and often reprocessing of discarded materials for reuse. |
| Reproduction | The sexual or asexual process by which organisms generate new individuals of the same kind and perpetuate the species. |
| Scientific method | A process that uses science process skills as tools to gather, organize, analyze, and communicate information. |
| Scientist | A person with expert knowledge of one or more sciences, that engages in processes to acquire and communicate knowledge. |
| Season | One of four natural divisions of the year—spring, summer, autumn, and winter—in temperate zones. Each season has its own characteristic weather and lasts approximately three months. The change in the seasons is brought about by the shift in the angle at which the Sun's rays strike the Earth. This angle changes as the Earth orbits in its yearly cycle around the Sun due to the tilt of the Earth's axis. |
| Sedimentary | Rock formed from layers of sediment that overlay and squeeze together or are chemically combined. |
| Solar system | A star and all the planets and other bodies that orbit it; the region in space where these bodies move. |
| Solid | Having a definite shape and a definite volume; one of the fundamental states of matter. |
| Sound wave | Longitudinal pressure waves in any material medium regardless of whether they constitute audible sound; earthquake waves and ultrasonic waves are sometimes called sound waves. |
| Space | The limitless expanse where all objects and events occur. Outer space is the region of the universe beyond Earth's atmosphere. |
| Speed | Amount of distance traveled divided by time taken; the time-rate at which any physical process takes place. |
| Subjectivity | Modified or affected by personal views, experience, or background. |
| Sun | The closest star to Earth and the center of our solar system. |
| Supernatural | Of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe. |
| Telescope | A usually tubular optical instrument for viewing distant objects by means of the refraction of light rays through a lens or the reflection of light rays by a concave mirror. |
| Theory | A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena. |
| Vacuum | A space empty of matter. |
| Vibration | A periodic and repetitive movement around an equilibrium point. |
| Volume | A measure of the amount of space an object takes up; also the loudness of a sound or signal. |
| Weight | The force with which a body is attracted to Earth or another celestial body, equal to the product of the object's mass and the acceleration of gravity. |
