abiotic factor - a
nonliving part of a ecosystem.
absolute zero - the
lowest temperature that can possibly be reached in
our Universe. Scientists have gotten very
close to reaching absolute zero but it is impossible
to reach it.
acid - a sour
tasting, corrosive substance - the opposite of a base substance.
Acidic solutions will turn a litmus red.
air pressure - the
force put on a given area by the weight of the air
around it.
alkali - a substance
having marked basic properties (i.e. substance with properties of a
base).
atmosphere - the
blanket of gases that surrounds the Earth.
Used in a sentence: burr, it's cold in here, it must
be something in the atmosphere.
atoms - made
up of protons and neutrons in a central nucleus surrounded by electrons. The
smallest particle of a chemical element that can take part in a chemical reaction
without being permanently changed.
anemometer - a device used to measure the speed of
wind.
angiosperm - a seed
plant that produces flowers.
antimatter - the
opposite of regular matter. For every particle
of ordinary matter there is an almost identical
antiparticle of antimatter.
aquifer -
an underground layer of loose rock, sand, or gravel that holds
water in its
spaces.
asexual reproduction -
the production of a new organism from only one cell.
asteroid
belt - region between Mars and Jupiter
where most asteroids are found.
atmosphere
- the blanket of air that surrounds the Earth. It is thickest near the ground
and gradually fades away to nothing in outerspace.
bacteria - members of
either of two kingdoms of one-celled living things
that have no nucleus, or center, in their cell body.
barometer - a device used to measure the pressure
of the atmosphere. The barometer unit of measure
is called millibars.
base - a bitter
tasting substance (and often slimy) - the opposite of a acid
substance. Base solutions will turn a litmus blue.
battery -
a device that produces electricity by means of chemical reaction. A battery
consist of one or more units called electric cells. Each cell has all the
chemicals and parts needed to produce an electric current.
bernoulli effect - described by Swiss
mathematician
Daniel Bernoulli in 1738. Bernoulli's theorem (sometimes called the Venturi
effect) implies that a decrease in fluid pressure is associated with an increase
in the fluid's velocity (speed). It's the basics for aircraft wing design
explaining that air flowing over the upper, curved part of the wing moves faster
than the air on the underside of the wing so that the pressure underneath is greater
and hence causes lift.
Big Bang - take a
large hardcover book and hold it flat about the
level of your eyes. On a hard, flat surface,
drop the book. That's a big bang.
biome - one of
Earth's large ecosystems, with its own kind of
climate, soil, plants, and animals.
biosphere
- part of the earth system located between the geospehere and the atmosphere, in
which life can exists.
biotic factor - a
living part of a ecosystem.
buoyancy - the ability to float, or in more technical
terms - the upward forces exerted by a fluid on a body in it.
cambium - the layer
in plants that separates the xylem from the phloem.
capacitor - a device that stores electric energy
in the form of an electric charge.
carbon cycle - the
continuous exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen
moving among living things.
carbon dioxide - a heavy colorless gas that does
not support combustion, dissolves in water to form carbonic acid, is formed in animal
respiration and in the decay or combustion of animal and vegetable matter, and is
absorbed from the air by plants in photosynthesis.
carnivore - an animal
that eats another animal.
catalyst
- something that triggers or increases the rate of a chemical reaction
Celsius - a unit of measurement for temperature.
Water freezes at 0ºC (zero degrees Celsius) and boils at 100°C (100 degrees
Celsius).
capillary action - the tendency of liquids to move
into or out of tiny, hair like passages.
cell - the smallest
unit of living matter.
charge - the state of an atom that has lost or gained
an electron.
chlorophyll - a green
chemical in plant cells that allows plants to use
the Sun’s energy for making food.
chemical reaction - a process by which one substance
is chemically converted to another. Chemical reactions involve the formation
or destruction of bonds between atoms.
circuit - the path followed by an electric current.
Electricity must flow in a circuit to do useful work.
cirrus cloud - a
high-altitude cloud with a featherlike shape, made
of ice crystals.
coanda effect - described by Henri Coanda, a Romanian
scientist, in the 1930's. This effect describes the tendency of moving air
of fluids to follow the nearby curved or inclined surface.
commensalism - a
relationship between two kids of organisms that
benefits one without harming the other.
coriolis effect - the
curving of the path of a moving object caused by the
Earth's rotation.
comet - a 'dirty
snowball" orbiting the Sun. It is a mixture of
ices, frozen gases, rock, and dust left over from
the formation of our solar system.
condensation - when a substance changes state from
a gas to a liquid.
conductor
- a thing that transmits heat, electricity, light, sound or other form of energy.
constellation -
patterns formed by groups of stars in the sky.
control - in a
science experiment, it is important to keep at least
one variable constant so that the impact of the
other variables can be accurately measured.
correlation - the
relationship between two variables such that the
value of one variable can be used to generate an
expectation about another variable.
cotyledon - a tiny
leaflike structure, also called a seedleaf, inside
the seed of an angiosperm.
cumulus cloud - a
puffy cloud that appears to rise up from a flat
bottom.
current -
the movement or flow of electric charges
dark matter - matter
that cannot be detected by our modern day
instruments but can be guessed that it does exist
because of gravitational interactions that it
exhibits.
doesn't matter -
well, yes, actually it does matter...
dicot - an angiosperm
with two cotyledons in each seed.
decibel - a unit of measurement for sound, it measures
the loudness or volume of the sound waves.
deciduous forest - a
forest biome with many kinds of trees that lose
their leaves each autumn.
density -
the ratio of the mass of a body to its volume, usually expressed as its
specific gravity.
dynamo - a device that creates electricity by turning
around a magnet near a coil of wire.
ecology - the study
of how living and non-living things interact with
each other.
ecosystem
- a isolated group of living (plants, animals, people) and non-living (rocks)
things that coexist together and interact which each other to ensure each
others' survival.
electric current - see current.
electrolysis - splitting a substance into the separate
chemicals that make it up, by passing an electric current
through it.
electrons
- a negatively charged subatomic particle. Electrons are found at varying
distances from a atom's nucleus. They make up almost the entire volume of
a atom but only account for a small part of the atom's mass. Compare to protons.
element - a basic chemical substance in which all
the atoms are the same, and different from the atoms of any
other substance.
embryo - the immature
plant inside a seed.
emulsion - tiny droplets of one liquid floating in
another liquid, such as oil droplets floating in water.
energy - the name given to the ability to do work.
epidermis - an
outermost layer of such plant parts as roots and
leaves. Also refers to human skin. Used
in a sentence: OMG, your epidermis is showing!
evaporation - the
slow changing of a liquid to a gas.
exothermic
- in chemistry, exothermic refers to a reaction that releases energy, generally
in the form of heat.
fact - something that
is known to be true. For instance, it is a
fact the Reeko is a scientific genius.
food chain
- a chain of organisms of which each members uses the lower member as a source
of food (people eat cows which eat plants). Applebees is at the top of the
food chain and McDonalds is at the bottom.
food web - the
overlapping food chains in an
ecosystem.
freezing point - the temperature at which a liquid
becomes a solid. Increased pressure usually raises the freezing point.
frond- the leaf of a
fern. Used in a sentence: I like Bob - he's my
best frond in the whole wide world.
friction - the resistance that occurs when two objects
rub together.
fungus - members of a
kingdom that contain one-celled and many-celled
living things that absorb food from their
environment.
galaxy - a collection
of billions of stars. Our Sun belongs to the
Milky Way galaxy.
grasslands - a
biome where grasses, not trees,
are the main plant life. Prairies are one kind
of grassland region.
gravity - the attractive central gravitational force
exerted by a celestial body such as earth.
greenhouse
effect - the warming of the atmosphere
caused by the atmosphere allowing shortwave radiation, which heats the Earth, to
pass through without a hall pass.
greenhouse gas
- the gases in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide,
and water vapor, that contribute to the greenhouse effect.
habitat - the place
where a plant or animal normally lives and grows.
herbivore - an animal
that eats plants, algae, or other producers.
humidity - the amount of water vapor in the air.
hypothesis - this is
your proposed explanation of your experiment.
It is usually formed based on previous experience or
your preliminary observations.
immiscible - incapable of mixing or attaining homogeneity.
induction - the process by which an object having
electrical or magnetic properties produces similar properties in a nearby object,
usually without direct contact.
inertia - the
tendency of a moving object to keep moving in a
straight line or of any object to resist a change on
motion.
inner planet - a
planet between the Sun and the asteroid belt
(Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars).
insolation - the
amount of the Sun's energy that reaches Earth at a
given time and place.
invertebrate - an
animal that does not have a backbone or another name
for the schoolyard bully.
inertia - the tendency of a body to remain at rest
or stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force.
isobar - a line on a
weather map connecting places with equal air
pressure.
ions - Atoms that carry an electric
charge, either positive or negative. If an atom gains an
electron it takes on a negative charge. If the atom loses an electron
it takes on a positive charge.
lightening - a powerful flash of electricity between
the negative electrical charges in clouds or between a cloud and the ground.
limiting factor -
anything that controls the growth or survival of a
population.
liquid nitrogen - the
liquid state of the element nitrogen. It's
used in science experiments to cool materials.
It is interesting to work with because it boils at
-320 degrees.
magnetism - the force that electric currents exert
on other electric currents.
mass - often defined as the amount of matter in an
object. Note that mass and weight are not the same thing.
Weight is the force on an object due to the gravitational pull of a planet or other
heavenly body. Mass on the other hand, remains constant, no matter where it
is.
meteor - a chunk of
rock from space that burns up as it travels through
the Earth's atmosphere.
meteorite - a chunk
of rock from space that strikes the surface of the
Earth of the Moon.
mole - the mass of a
substance, in grams, that is equal to the substances
molecular weight. The number of particles in
one mole of a substance is called Avogadro's number.
molecule - one of the basic units of matter.
It is the smallest particle into which a substance can be divided and still have
he chemical identity of the original substance.
momentum - the speed or force of something that is
moving.
monocot - an
angiosperm with one
cotyledon in each seed.
mutualism - a
relationship between two kinds of organisms that
benefits both.
nitrogen cycle - the
continuous trapping of nitrogen gas into compounds
in the soil and its return to the air.
omnivore - an animal
that eats both plants and animals.
osmosis - the natural passage or diffusion of water
(or other liquids) through a semi permeable membrane.
outer planet - one of
the five planets beyond the asteroid belt (Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto)
oxidize - to combine with oxygen.
oxygen - a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that
is the most plentiful element in the Earth's crust. It was discovered in 1772
by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
parasitism - a
relationship in which one organism lives in or on
another organism and benefits from that relationship
while the other organism may be harmed by it.
phloem - the tissue
through which food from the leaves moves down
through the rest of a plant.
photosynthesis - the
food-making process in green plants that uses
sunlight.
planet - any of the
nine major objects that travel around the Sun.
pollination - the
transfer of a pollen grain to the egg-producing part
of a plant.
potential
- the amount of electrification of a point with reference to some standard.
pot of gold - a hidden treasure,
many of which can be found in Reeko's Mad Scientist Lab.
precipitation - any
form of water particles that falls from the
atmosphere and reaches the
ground - rain, snow, sleet, etc.
predator - an animal
that hunts other animals for food.
pressure - the application of a steady force upon
another object.
protist - a member of
a kingdom that contains one-celled and many-celled
living things, some that make food and some that
hunt for food. May also refer to the act of
civil disobedience where you march around with signs
protisting something that makes you made.
protons -
a positively charged subatomic particle. Protons, along with other subatomic
particles called Neutrons, make up the nucleus of a atom.
The number of protons in an atom is called the atomic number of the element.
Compare to electrons.
quark - believed to
be on of the basic building blocks of matter. It
is also the sound that British ducks make.
reaction - when two or more chemicals combine to
make a new chemical substance.
refraction - the bending of a wave path, as of light
or sound, at the boundary between two different mediums.
relative humidity - a
comparison between how much water vapor is in the
air and how much the air could hold at a given
temperature if it were full, or saturated.
resistance
- how much an object resists or opposes any electrical current that attempts to
pass through it.
resonance - when the vibrations of a substance, such
as the wood of a violin, correspond to the air vibrations which make the sound.
rhizoid - one of the
hairlike fibers that anchor a moss to the soil and
take in water from the soil.
rhizome - the
underground stem of a fern.
secondary battery - a battery
that can be recharged.
sexual reproduction -
the production of a new organism from a female sex
cell and a male sex cell.
specific gravity
- the ratio of the density of a body to the density of water,
the latter being taken as unity.
static electricity - describes the situation where
objects carry a charge.
stratus cloud - a
cloud that forms in a blanket like layer.
symbiosis - a
relationship between two kinds of organisms that
lasts over time.
taiga - a cool forest
biome of conifers in the upper
Northern Hemisphere.
transformer - a device that changes the
voltage of electricity.
treasure
- something that is very valuable to you. Could be your pet dog, pirate's
loot, or a pot of gold.
tropism - a response
of a plant toward or away from stimulus.
troposphere - the
layer of the atmosphere closet to the Earth's
surface.
tundra - large,
treeless plain in the arctic regions where the
ground is frozen all year.
turbine - pronounced TUR bihn or pronounced TUR byn,
is a device with a rotor turned by a moving fluid, such as water, steam, gas, or
wind. A turbine changes kinetic energy (energy of movement) into mechanical energy
(energy in the form of mechanical power).
uranus - we just had
to put this word in the glossary because, well, it sounds funny...
vascular - containing plant tissue through which
water moves up and food moves down.
voltage -
differences in potential (or electric state) related to
the electrical forces that 'push' charges through a conductor.
Can be thought of as the pressure which pushes electricity through a wire.
weight - the
force on an object due to the gravitational pull of a planet or other heavenly body.
wock - hard, inanimate object that you throw at a
wabbit.
xylem - the tissue
through which water and minerals move up through a
plant.