FCAT Vocabulary Quiz: Essential Terms For Exam Success

CLEAVAGE is the property used to describe how a mineral breaks apart along smooth surfaces. A mineral with NO cleavage will break apart into rough, uneven pieces. The mineral in this image (gypsum) has good cleavage. When broken apart it will break cleanly to create nice, smooth surfaces.

A scientist might use a graduated cylinder to measure the volume of a liquid, a thermometer to measure temperature, a meter tape to measure length or distance, and a triple-beam balance to measure the mass of an object. Therefore, all of these tools might be used to measure in an experiment.

A hypothesis or prediction is an educated guess about what might happen.

TEMPERATURE is a measure of how hot or cold an object or substance is.

Scientists (an almost everyone in the world except the U.S.) use the Celsius scale to measure temperature. In the Celsius scale, water freezes at zero degrees and boils at 100 degrees.

"Normal" temperatures in Miami are between 20 and 30 degrees. 30 degrees would be hot, room temperature is about 20 degrees Celsius, and a cool day would be in the mid teens.

CHEMICAL PROPERTIES can only be observed by changing the object. For example: Will wood burn? The only way to find out is by lighting on fire. When you see the flame, you know that it is burned, but the wood is no longer wood.

The color of the flame when objects are burned is different. The only way to find out is by burning them.

In the image above you can see that calcium is orange when burned and zinc is yellow. Solid calcium is NOT orange. The only way to see what color it is when burned is by burning it. But, when you burned it, it's not calcium any more.

Does iron rust? The only way to find out is by letting it rust.

The term "streak" refers to the color of the powder that a mineral leaves behind when it is rubbed across a white streak plate. This characteristic helps in identifying minerals as the color of the streak can sometimes be different from the color of the mineral itself.

There are 3 main types of rocks. Rocks are made of minerals.

IGNEOUS rock forms from cooled magma or lava.

SEDIMENTARY rock forms from layers of sediment at the bottom of lakes, oceans, or rivers. Over time, these layers are kind of glued together to form sedimentary rock. Fossils can often be found in sedimentary rocks.

METAMORPHIC rocks are either igneous rocks or sedimentary rocks that are squeezed so hard by tremendous pressure (like under the weight of a mountain) that their structure changes. Metamorphic rocks are also heated by this pressure, but not enough to turn into liquid rock (magma).

Classifying is one of the most important Science process skills. Classify means to organize or sort into groups based on similar properties.

Classification means to sort into groups with similar properties. Karen classified the rocks as being igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic.

MATTER is anything that takes up space and has mass. Anything you can feel or touch is matter.

Some students think that air has no mass. That's NOT true. You can feel air when wind hits you and if you fill up a balloon with air, it's heavier than an empty balloon.

What's not matter? Energy (heat, light, sound, etc.) and ideas are not matter.

PHYSICAL PROPERTIES that can be observed or measured without changing the original object or substance.

Physical properties include color, smell, mass, volume, does it conduct electricity? is it attracted to a magnet, will it dissolve in water? etc.

The melting point and boiling point of water or metals is a physical property because your are not actually changing the substance.

Sharing information in a report, giving a speech, writing a book, making a movie or TV show are ways that a Scientist COMMUNICATES the information he/she has learned.

When ice melts, that's a physical change. Nothing NEW is created. Frozen water and liquid water are still water.

In a CHEMICAL CHANGE, something new is created that has properties different from the original substance. Common chemical changes are: rust, combining baking soda and vinegar, cooking food, and burning a match.

When you mix baking soda and vinegar, you see bubbles, hear fizzing because carbon dioxide is released. If you feel the container, you will notice that it got cold. The remaining "stuff" is no longer baking soda or vinegar.

Rust happens when oxygen and iron combine to form iron oxide. Obviously, rust is no longer iron or oxygen, but something new that is reddish in color. Iron is not red and oxygen has no color.

If you slice an apple in half, that's a physical change, but if you eat the apple or let it rot, it's no longer going to be an apple.

MASS is the amount of matter a substance of object has. At sea level on Earth, an objects mass is the same as objects weight. In outer space, a bowling ball would still have mass but it would be weightless.

Scientist often use a triple beam balance to measure mass. The unit of measure for mass is the
GRAM.

The moon has much less gravity than the Earth because it is so much smaller. If you went to the moon, your mass would be the same, but you would weigh 1/6 as much as you do on the Earth. If you have a mass of 60 kilograms on Earth, your mass on the moon would be 60 kilograms, but your wight would be 10 kilograms.

Qualitative is about senses, Quantitative is about numbers.

When ice melts, that's a PHYSICAL CHANGE. . Nothing NEW is created. Frozen water and liquid water are still water. If you rip a paper in half, it's still paper. If you slice an apple into pieces, the pieces are still apple.

In a CHEMICAL CHANGE, something new is created that has properties different from the original substance. Common chemical changes are: rust, combining baking soda and vinegar, cooking food, and burning a match.

When you mix baking soda and vinegar, you see bubbles, hear fizzing because carbon dioxide is released. If you feel the container, you will notice that it got cold. The remaining "stuff" is no longer baking soda or vinegar.

Rust happens when oxygen and iron combine to form iron oxide. Obviously, rust is no longer iron or oxygen, but something new that is reddish in color. Iron is not red and oxygen has no color.

Matter is anything that takes up space and has mass. When you blow air into a balloon, you prove that air takes up space. Believe it or not, given 2 identical balloons, one empty the other full of air, the full balloon will weigh more - it has more mass.

When you feel wind, that's air hitting you. Just because it's invisible, doesn't mean that air isn't matter.

BTW, Nicolas knew the answer to this question.

VOLUME is the amount of space something takes up. In general, the volume of liquids and solids doesn't change very much. Gasses, however, can be squeezed to have less volume. If you release the air inside a balloon, the volume of the gas in the balloon increases.

In Science, the volume of objects can be measured using a graduated cylinder or beaker.

In Science, the unit of measure for volume is the LITER.

Volume and mass aren't necessarily related. In this image, the golf ball and ping pong ball have almost the same amount of volume. Actually, the ping pong ball is a little larger. But, however, the golf ball has more mass.

There are 3 main types of rocks. Rocks are made of minerals.

IGNEOUS rock forms from cooled magma or lava.

SEDIMENTARY rock forms from layers of sediment at the bottom of lakes, oceans, or rivers. Over time, these layers are kind of glued together to form sedimentary rock. Fossils can often be found in sedimentary rocks.

METAMORPHIC rocks are either igneous rocks or sedimentary rocks that are squeezed so hard by tremendous pressure (like under the weight of a mountain) that their structure changes. Metamorphic rocks are also heated by this pressure, but not enough to turn into liquid rock (magma).

MINERALS are inorganic solids with distinctive chemical composition and crystalline structure.
The key word in the previous definition was inorganic. Inorganic means not living or not made from living things. Minerals are made from things that are NOT living. If you break apart a rock and look at it carefully, you will see that it is made from many different types of minerals.

There are 3 main types of rocks. Rocks are made of minerals.

IGNEOUS rock forms from cooled magma or lava.

SEDIMENTARY rock forms from layers of sediment at the bottom of lakes, oceans, or rivers. Over time, these layers are kind of glued together to form sedimentary rock. Fossils can often be found in sedimentary rocks.

METAMORPHIC rocks are either igneous rocks or sedimentary rocks that are squeezed so hard by tremendous pressure (like under the weight of a mountain) that their structure changes. Metamorphic rocks are also heated by this pressure, but not enough to turn into liquid rock (magma).

There are 3 main types of rocks. Rocks are made of minerals.

IGNEOUS rock forms from cooled magma or lava.

SEDIMENTARY rock forms from layers of sediment at the bottom of lakes, oceans, or rivers. Over time, these layers are kind of glued together to form sedimentary rock. Fossils can often be found in sedimentary rocks.

METAMORPHIC rocks are either igneous rocks or sedimentary rocks that are squeezed so hard by tremendous pressure (like under the weight of a mountain) that their structure changes. Metamorphic rocks are also heated by this pressure, but not enough to turn into liquid rock (magma).

There are blue letters that spell Air France, the plane does have more than 5 wheels, and the water is green/blue. Those are all observations. These people look like they are on vacation at the beach. Calling the buildings in the background hotels is a logical inference, but not a certainty.

HARDNESS is the word used to describe how easy it is to scratch a mineral. Moh's scale of hardness is used to describe a mineral's hardness. Diamonds have a hardness of 10. Talc (the stuff in baby powder) has a hardness of 1.

You use your senses to make observations about things. You can clearly observe that it is gold colored, reflects light, and has a rough surface.

You can NOT tell from looking at this object that it is MADE out of gold. That would be an inference. If you've ever seen a gold nugget, you can make a pretty good inference that it is indeed made of gold, but you can't prove it just by looking at it.

Luster refers to the way a mineral's surface reflects light. It describes how the mineral appears in terms of its shine or dullness. Luster can be categorized as metallic or non-metallic, with metallic luster being shiny like metal and non-metallic luster having various degrees of shine or dullness. The answer "luster" is the correct choice because it accurately describes the property of a mineral that relates to its appearance when reflecting light.

SOIL is the loose top layer of Earth's surface made of weathered rock, minerals, and organic matter.

Some people call dirt. Basically, soil is a mixture of small pieces of rock, minerals and organic matter. Organic matter is stuff that used to be alive, but that has broken down. If you throw all the vegetables into a big pile in your back yard, after a few months, the stuff at the bottom of the pile starts turning back into soil.

This statement is backwards. Qualitative observations are made using your senses, quantitative observations involve numbers.

The man wearing the red shirt, the color of the sky, and the number of large buildings in the background are observation. You can't tell for sure, but you can infer that the plane is landing because it's wheels are down, you can see a fence that they usually have at the end of the runway and the people do not seem to be afraid, which they would be if the plane was crashing.

The responding variable in an experiment is the variable that changes because of the manipulated variable. It's usually the variable that you measure when making quantitative observations during an experiment. In this experiment, we measured the height of the plant every day, so height is the responding variable.

The manipulated variable in an experiment is the variable that you are testing. It's the variable that you change on purpose. In this experiment, we were testing different amounts of salt.