Unit 1 · 6 lessons
STEM Skills & Investigations
The skills you use in every science unit: planning fair tests, measuring and graphing data, judging sources and claims, designing and testing prototypes, using Python to model science, and working safely with WHMIS.
- 55 practice questions
- 54 flashcards
- 2 interactive lessons
Lessons
- 1Questions, Hypotheses and Fair TestsHow scientists turn a question into a fair test: writing a testable question and a hypothesis, choosing independent, dependent and controlled variables, using a control group and repeated trials, recording qualitative and quantitative observations, and writing a conclusion that names sources of error.9 questions
- 2Measurement, Data Tables and GraphsHow to measure and report data like a scientist: SI units and the prefixes kilo, centi, milli and micro, reading instruments to the right precision, the difference between accuracy and precision, percent error, data tables with units in the headings, and graphs with a line of best fit for interpolation and extrapolation.Interactive10 questions
- 3Research and Scientific LiteracyHow to research a science question and judge what you find: checking a source's author, date, evidence, purpose and peer review, building a claim–evidence–reasoning argument, spotting bias, telling correlation from causation, and thinking about how artificial intelligence and other new technologies affect society, along with the people from many communities who have shaped science in Canada.9 questions
- 4The Engineering Design ProcessHow engineers and skilled trades solve practical problems: defining the problem with criteria and constraints, researching and brainstorming, choosing a design with a decision matrix, building and testing a prototype, and improving it over and over. Includes STEM careers and skilled trades, and Canadian design stories.8 questions
- 5Coding to Model ScienceHow a few lines of Python can model science: variables that store measurements, arithmetic and print, for loops that apply a rule over and over, and simple models of a growing population and a cooling cup of tea. You will learn to read a program's output and to judge where a model matches reality and where it does not.Interactive10 questions
- 6Lab Safety and WHMISHow to work safely in a science lab: what WHMIS is, what each hazard pictogram means, how to read supplier labels and workplace labels, what a Safety Data Sheet (SDS) tells you, which personal protective equipment (PPE) to wear, and the safe habits and emergency steps every lab user needs.9 questions