| Section |
Learning Outcomes |
| Section 1 |
- Describe the formation and development of Earth’s geosphere.
- Analyze the spatial distribution of major regions of the geosphere.
- Identify processes that are of primary importance to the operation of the geosphere.
|
| Section 2 |
- Design an experiment that measures the volume of gas dissolved in a liquid.
- Describe how Earth’s fluid spheres formed and have changed through time.
- Examine interactions between Earth’s geosphere and its fluid spheres.
|
| Section 3 |
- Consider a hypothesis about how life may have originated on Earth.
- Examine models of the development of compounds necessary for life on Earth.
- Examine evidence of the oldest forms of life on Earth.
- Infer how ancient organisms lived by comparing them to modern ones.
|
Section 4 |
- Conduct an experiment that shows how iron reacts with oxygen in a solution.
- Understand how early life forms contributed oxygen to the atmosphere.
- Examine the rock record for evidence of the development of the atmosphere.
|
Section 5 |
- Use mathematics to explore the duration of geologic time.
- Recognize the major events in Earth’s past that define parts of the geologic time scale.
- Examine the use of radioactive elements to date rocks.
|
Section 6 |
- Understand the process of fossilization.
- Determine which plant and animal parts have the highest and lowest potential for becoming fossilized, and understand why this is the case.
- Determine which organisms in your community are most likely to become preserved in the fossil record.
- Determine where fossils may be forming within your community.
- Understand the hierarchy of a food chain and how this affects the likelihood that an organism will be preserved in the fossil record.
|
Section 7 |
- Consider various kinds of evolutionary processes.
- Analyze how natural selection favors the best-adapted organism in a population.
- Understand how fossils provide important clues about change through time.
- Develop ideas from fossils about rates of evolutionary change.
|
Section 8 |
- Define the major biomes of North America and identify your community’s biome.
- Understand that organisms on land and in the ocean have physical and chemical limits to where they live.
- Recognize the most common plants and animals in your community.
- Explore how a change in physical and chemical conditions within your community could alter its biome.
- Understand that there are predictable relationships between where the different biomes occur in North America.
|
Section 9 |
- Understand how changes in Earth’s climate have affected organisms throughout geologic time.
- Understand that the organisms that dominate the continents today differ from the organisms that dominated Earth in the deep geologic past.
- Understand that severe ecological disruptions alter the history of life, resulting in extinction followed by the evolution and appearance of new organisms.
- Understand that newly evolved organisms develop similar body features that allow them to use the same resources as those organisms that became extinct.
|
Use the navigation on the left to find materials that support the relevant sections of this chapter.
