Strand I: Scientific Thinking and Practice
Standard I:
Understand the processes of scientific investigations and use inquiry and scientific ways of observing, experimenting, predicting, and validating to think critically.

9-12 Benchmark I:
Use accepted scientific methods to collect, analyze, and interpret data and observations and to design and conduct scientific investigations and communicate results.

1. Describe the essential components of an investigation, including appropriate methodologies, proper equipment, and safety precautions.

2. Design and conduct scientific investigations.

3. Use appropriate technologies to collect, analyze, and communicate scientific data (e.g., computers, calculators, balances, microscopes).

4. Convey results of investigations using scientific concepts, methodologies, and expressions.

Benchmark II:
Understand that scientific processes produce scientific knowledge that is continually evaluated, validated, revised, or rejected.

2. Use scientific reasoning and valid logic.

9-12 Benchmark III:
Use mathematical concepts, principles, and expressions to analyze data, develop models, understand patterns and relationships, evaluate findings, and draw conclusions.

1. Create multiple displays of data to analyze and explain the relationships in scientific investigations.

4. Identify and apply measurement techniques and consider possible effects of measurement errors.

5. Use mathematics to express and establish scientific relationships (e.g., scientific notation, vectors, dimensional analysis).

Strand II: The Content of Science
Standard I (Physical Science):
Understand the structure and properties of matter, the characteristics of energy, and the interactions between matter and energy.

9-12 Benchmark I:
Understand the properties, underlying structure, and reactions of matter.

Properties of Matter
1. Classify matter in a variety of ways (e.g., element, compound, mixture; solid, liquid, gas; acidic, basic, neutral).

2. Identify, measure, and use a variety of physical and chemical properties (e.g., electrical conductivity, density, viscosity, chemical reactivity, pH, melting point).

4. Describe trends in properties (e.g., ionization energy or reactivity as a function of location on the periodic table, boiling point of organic liquids as a function of molecular weight).

Structure of Matter
5. Understand that matter is made of atoms and that atoms are made of subatomic particles.

6. Understand atomic structure.

7. Explain how electrons determine the properties of substances.

8. Make predictions about elements using the periodic table (e.g., number of valence electrons, metallic character, reactivity, conductivity, type of bond between elements).

10. Know that states of matter (i.e., solid, liquid, gas) depend on the arrangement of atoms and molecules and on their freedom of motion.

Chemical Reactions
12. Know that chemical reactions involve the rearrangement of atoms, and that they occur on many timescales (e.g., picoseconds to millennia).

13. Understand types of chemical reactions (e.g., synthesis, decomposition, combustion, redox, neutralization) and identify them as exothermic or endothermic.

14. Know how to express chemical reactions with balanced equations.

15. Describe how the rate of chemical reactions depends on many factors that include temperature, concentration, and the presence of catalysts.

Strand II: The Content of Science
Standard I (Physical Science):
Understand the structure and properties of matter, the characteristics of energy, and the interactions between matter and energy.

9-12 Benchmark II:
Understand the transformation and transmission of energy and how energy and matter interact.

Energy Transformation and Transfer
1. Identify different forms of energy, including kinetic, gravitational (potential), chemical, thermal, nuclear, and electromagnetic.

2. Explain how thermal energy (heat) consists of the random motion and vibrations of atoms and molecules and is measured by temperature.

3. Understand that energy can change from one form to another (e.g., changes in kinetic and potential energy in a gravitational field, heats of reaction, hydroelectric dams) and know that energy is conserved in these changes.