8.2: Students use computers to organize and compare information. They perform calculations and determine the appropriate units for the answers. They weigh the evidence for or against an argument, as well as the logic of the conclusions.

8.2.3: Use proportional reasoning to solve problems.

Estimating Population Size

8.2.10: Identify and criticize the reasoning in arguments in which fact and opinion are intermingled or the conclusions do not follow logically from the evidence given, an analogy is not apt, no mention is made of whether the control group is very much like the experimental group, or all members of a group are implied to have nearly identical characteristics that differ from those of other groups.

Diffusion
Effect of Environment on New Life Form
Effect of Temperature on Gender
Growing Plants
Pendulum Clock
Seed Germination
Sight vs. Sound Reactions

8.3: 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.

8.3.3: Explain that the solid crust of Earth, including both the continents and the ocean basins, consists of separate plates that ride on a denser, hot, gradually deformable layer of earth. Understand that the crust sections move very slowly, pressing against one another in some places, pulling apart in other places. Further understand that ocean-floor plates may slide under continental plates, sinking deep into Earth, and that the surface layers of these plates may fold, forming mountain ranges.

Building Pangaea
Plate Tectonics

8.3.4: Explain that earthquakes often occur along the boundaries between colliding plates, and molten rock from below creates pressure that is released by volcanic eruptions, helping to build up mountains. Understand that under the ocean basins, molten rock may well up between separating plates to create new ocean floor. Further understand that volcanic activity along the ocean floor may form undersea mountains, which can thrust above the ocean’s surface to become islands.

Plate Tectonics

8.3.5: Explain that everything on or anywhere near Earth is pulled toward Earth’s center by a gravitational force.

Gravitational Force
Gravity Pitch

8.3.8: Explain that all matter is made up of atoms which are far too small to see directly through an optical microscope. Understand that the atoms of any element are similar but are different from atoms of other elements. Further understand that atoms may stick together in well defined molecules or may be packed together in large arrays. Also understand that different arrangements of atoms into groups comprise all substances.

Element Builder

8.3.9: Demonstrate, using drawings and models, the movement of atoms in a solid, liquid, and gaseous state. Explain that atoms and molecules are perpetually in motion.

Temperature and Particle Motion

8.3.10: Explain that increased temperature means that atoms have a greater average energy of motion and that most gases expand when heated.

Temperature and Particle Motion

8.3.11: Describe how groups of elements can be classified based on similar properties, including highly reactive metals, less reactive metals, highly reactive non-metals, less reactive non-metals, and some almost completely non-reactive gases.

Mineral Identification

8.3.12: Explain that no matter how substances within a closed system interact with one another, or how they combine or break apart, the total mass of the system remains the same. Understand that the atomic theory explains the conservation of matter: if the number of atoms stays the same no matter how they are rearranged, then their total mass stays the same.

Chemical Equations

8.3.13: Explain that energy cannot be created or destroyed but only changed from one form into another.

Air Track
Energy Conversion in a System
Energy of a Pendulum
Inclined Plane - Sliding Objects
Roller Coaster Physics

8.3.14: Describe how heat can be transferred through materials by the collision of atoms, or across space by radiation, or if the material is fluid, by convection currents that are set up in it that aid the transfer of heat.

Conduction and Convection
Heat Absorption
Heat Transfer by Conduction
Herschel Experiment
Radiation

8.3.16: Explain that every object exerts gravitational force on every other object and that the force depends on how much mass the objects have and how far apart they are.

Gravitational Force

8.3.17: Explain that the sun’s gravitational pull holds Earth and the other planets in their orbits, just as the planets’ gravitational pull keeps their moons in orbit around them.

Gravity Pitch

8.3.19: Investigate and compare series and parallel circuits.

Advanced Circuits
Circuit Builder
Circuits

8.4: Students trace the flow of matter and energy through ecosystems. They understand that the total amount of matter remains constant and that almost all food energy has its origin in sunlight.

8.4.1: Differentiate between inherited traits, such as hair color or flower color, and acquired skills, such as manners.

Inheritance
Reverse the Field

8.4.4: Describe how matter is transferred from one organism to another repeatedly and between organisms and their physical environment.

Food Chain

8.4.5: Explain that energy can be transferred from one form to another in living things.

Food Chain
Forest Ecosystem
Prairie Ecosystem

8.4.8: Describe how environmental conditions affect the survival of individual organisms and how entire species may prosper in spite of the poor survivability or bad fortune of individuals.

Natural Selection
Rainfall and Bird Beaks

8.4.9: Recognize and describe that fossil evidence is consistent with the idea that human beings evolved from earlier species.

Human Evolution - Skull Analysis

8.5: Students apply mathematics in scientific contexts. Students use mathematical ideas, such as symbols, geometrical relationships, statistical relationships, and the use of key words and rules in logical reasoning, in the representation and synthesis of data.

8.5.1: Understand and explain that a number must be written with an appropriate number of significant figures (determined by the measurements from which the number is derived).

Unit Conversions 2 - Scientific Notation and Significant Digits

8.5.2: Show that an equation containing a variable may be true for just one value of the variable.

Pendulum Clock

8.5.3: Demonstrate that mathematical statements can be used to describe how one quantity changes when another changes.

Pendulum Clock

8.5.9: Compare the mean, median, and mode of a data set.

Effect of Temperature on Gender
Seed Germination

8.7: Students analyze the parts and interactions of systems to understand internal and external relationships. They investigate rates of change, cyclic changes, and changes that counterbalance one another. They use mental and physical models to reflect upon and interpret the limitations of such models.

8.7.7: Illustrate how things, such as seasons or body temperature, occur in cycles.

Comparing Earth and Venus
Moonrise, Moonset, and Phases