7.2: Students use instruments and tools to measure, calculate, and organize data. They frame arguments in quantitative terms when possible. They question claims and understand that findings may be interpreted in more than one acceptable way.

7.2.4: Express numbers like 100, 1,000, and 1,000,000 as powers of 10.

Unit Conversions 2 - Scientific Notation and Significant Digits

7.2.5: Estimate probabilities of outcomes in familiar situations, on the basis of history or the number of possible outcomes.

Estimating Population Size

7.2.6: Read analog and digital meters on instruments used to make direct measurements of length, volume, weight, elapsed time, rates, or temperatures, and choose appropriate units.

Elapsed Time
Measuring Volume

7.3: Students collect and organize data to identify relationships between physical objects, events, and processes. They use logical reasoning to question their own ideas as new information challenges their conceptions of the natural world.

7.3.7: Give examples of some changes in Earth’s surface that are abrupt, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and some changes that happen very slowly, such as uplift and wearing down of mountains and the action of glaciers.

Plate Tectonics

7.3.9: Explain that sedimentary rock, when buried deep enough, may be reformed by pressure and heat, perhaps melting and recrystallizing into different kinds of rock. Describe that these reformed rock layers may be forced up again to become land surface and even mountains, and subsequently erode.

Rock Cycle

7.3.11: Explain that the sun loses energy by emitting light. Note that only a tiny fraction of that light reaches Earth. Understand that the sun’s energy arrives as light with a wide range of wavelengths, consisting of visible light, infrared, and ultraviolet radiation.

Herschel Experiment
Radiation

7.3.17: Investigate that an unbalanced force, acting on an object, changes its speed or path of motion or both, and know that if the force always acts toward the same center as the object moves, the object’s path may curve into an orbit around the center.

Force and Fan Carts

7.3.18: Describe that light waves, sound waves, and other waves move at different speeds in different materials.

Longitudinal Waves
Ripple Tank

7.4: Students begin to trace the flow of matter and energy through ecosystems. They recognize the fundamental difference between plants and animals and understand its basis at the cellular level. Students distinguish species, particularly through an examination of internal structures and functions. They use microscopes to observe cells and recognize that cells function in similar ways in all organisms.

7.4.1: Explain that similarities among organisms are found in external and internal anatomical features, including specific characteristics at the cellular level, such as the number of chromosomes. Understand that these similarities are used to classify organisms since they may be used to infer the degree of relatedness among organisms.

Dichotomous Keys

7.4.4: Explain that cells continually divide to make more cells for growth and repair and that various organs and tissues function to serve the needs of cells for food, air, and waste removal.

Cell Division
Digestive System

7.4.5: Explain that the basic functions of organisms, such as extracting energy from food and getting rid of wastes, are carried out within the cell and understand that the way which cells function is similar in all organisms.

Cell Structure

7.4.7: Describe how plants use the energy from light to make sugars from carbon dioxide and water to produce food that can be used immediately or stored for later use.

Cell Energy Cycle
Photosynthesis Lab

7.4.8: Describe how organisms that eat plants break down the plant structures to produce the materials and energy that they need to survive, and in turn, how they are consumed by other organisms.

Forest Ecosystem

7.4.9: Understand and explain that as any population of organisms grows, it is held in check by one or more environmental factors. These factors could result in depletion of food or nesting sites and/or increase loss to increased numbers of predators or parasites. Give examples of some consequences of this.

Coral Reefs 1 - Abiotic Factors
Food Chain
Rabbit Population by Season

7.4.12: Explain that viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites may infect the human body and interfere with normal body functions. Recognize that a person can catch a cold many times because there are many varieties of cold viruses that cause similar symptoms.

Virus Lytic Cycle

7.5: Students apply mathematics in scientific contexts. They use mathematical ideas, such as relations between operations, symbols, statistical relationships, and the use of logical reasoning, in the representation and synthesis of data.

7.5.1: Demonstrate how a number line can be extended on the other side of zero to represent negative numbers and give examples of instances where this is useful.

Estimating Population Size

7.5.2: Illustrate how lines can be parallel, perpendicular, or oblique.

Estimating Population Size

7.5.3: Demonstrate how the scale chosen for a graph or drawing determines its interpretation.

Graphing Skills

7.6: Students gain understanding of how the scientific enterprise operates through examples of historical events. Through the study of these events, they understand that new ideas are limited by the context in which they are conceived, are often rejected by the scientific establishment, sometimes spring from unexpected findings, and grow or transform slowly through the contributions of many different investigators.

7.6.2: Understand and explain that Louis Pasteur wanted to find out what caused milk and wine to spoil. Note that he demonstrated that spoilage and fermentation occur when microorganisms enter from the air, multiply rapidly, and produce waste products, with some desirable results, such as carbon dioxide in bread dough, and some undesirable, such as acetic acid in wine. Understand that after showing that spoilage could be avoided by keeping germs out or by destroying them with heat, Pasteur investigated animal diseases and showed that microorganisms were involved in many of them. Also note that other investigators later showed that specific kinds of germs caused specific diseases.

Disease Spread