SS1a Thinking skills: KWL

KWL stands for Know, Want to know, Learned. You can use this strategy to help you keep track of what
you already know, what you want to know and then, after the lesson, what you have learned that you
didnt know before.
This strategy is very useful when watching videos in class, but you can also use it at the beginning of a
lesson, or the beginning of a whole module.
Suppose you are going to watch a video about earthquakes. You should never just watch the video
without attempting to make notes. However, if you make too many notes you might miss something
interesting or important. By using KWL, you can write down a few facts about asteroids before watching
the video. You can also write down a few things that you want to learn from the video. While you are
watching the video you can add new information in the Learned column. Its a great way to learn and a
great way to increase your confidence about your own learning.
The example below shows how to lay out your page when doing a KWL exercise. It shows the Know
column filled in because that is the information that you already know. You should also fill in the Want to
know column before you watch the video. Remember that these are only examples. You might write
some quite different things, and they would still be correct.
You would fill in the last column while you are watching the video.
I know that

I want to know

earthquakes happen in some

places more than others.

which parts of the world get

the most earthquakes?

the ground moves in an

earthquake.

what makes the ground

move?

scientists cannot predict

earthquakes.

why can't they?

we only get small

earthquakes in the UK.

why we don't get big

earthquakes.

some earthquakes are bigger

than others.

what is the biggest recorded

earthquake?

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Learned

SS1b Thinking skills: KWL grid

Name

Class

Date

____

KWL Grid
Know

Want to know

Learned

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Sheet 2 of 2

SS2a Thinking skills: CAP

CAP stands for consider all possibilities. Sometimes, when you are given a question, there is only one
answer: the right answer. However, sometimes questions have more than one answer that might be
correct. For example, imagine that you have made an electrical circuit with a cell and a lamp, but it does
not work. What are the possible reasons for this? It could be for lots of reasons such as:
the cell is flat

the lamp is broken

the wires are not connected properly

one of the wires is broken inside the insulation.

These are just some of the possible answers. You can probably think of some more of your own. Try out
this idea by doing a CAP exercise on the following problems. Try to think of at least three possibilities for
each problem.
1

Scientists cannot predict when an earthquake will happen.

A person is very thin.

A rope breaks when it is used to tow a car.

Now try to think of your own CAP type of question. Write it down, then write down three possible answers.

SS2b Thinking skills: CAP problem

CAP problem:
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Possible reasons:
1

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SS3a Thinking skills: PMI

PMI is a thinking skills exercise that stands for plus, minus, interesting. You are given a statement and
you try to think of a plus point, a minus point and an interesting point (or interesting question) about that
statement. For example:
The atmosphere should block out all ultraviolet radiation.
Just read the statement and think of some possible answers. Here is an example of one PMI answer:
P: We would not get skin cancer from ultraviolet radiation.
M: We would never get a suntan.
I: Some insects see using ultraviolet what would happen to them?
The great thing about PMI statements is that there isnt just one correct answer. Have a go at the
statements below. Try to make your answers as original as possible and dont worry about what anybody
else has written. Your answers are just as important and just as good!
1

A day on Earth should last for 30 hours.

No-one should be allowed to add polluting gases to the atmosphere.

People should not be allowed to live in earthquake zones.

Anything that is not completely safe should be banned.

You should only have to go to school until you are 10 years old.

SS3b Thinking skills: PMI grid

PMI statement ____________________________________________________________________
Plus

________________________________________________________________________

Minus

________________________________________________________________________

Interesting _______________________________________________________________________

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SS4 Scientific method

The scientific method is a way of testing ideas about things. The flowchart shows how this often works.

For the scientific method to work, the question must be a question that can be tested scientifically. For
example, you could ask 'Are snowflakes beautiful?'. This is not a scientific question. You could ask people
what they think, but then you would have found out how many people think that snowflakes are beautiful,
which is not quite the same question!
In many cases, scientific questions are tested by carrying out experiments in a laboratory. However there
are many scientific questions that cannot be answered in this way. For example:
Which animals and plants live in this habitat? You cant do an experiment but you could carry out surveys
in the habitat to find out.
Do people find people with a sun tan more attractive? You cant do an experiment but you could do a
survey to collect your evidence.

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Sheet 1 of 2

SS4 Scientific method (cont.)

What is the inside of the Earth made of?

Scientists do some experiments with rocks, but it is not possible to drill a deep enough hole to get
samples of rocks from the middle of the Earth. Scientists have to use many different forms of evidence to
try to work out what the Earth is made of.
Will the Sun always stay the same?
Scientists cannot carry out experiments on the Sun, but they can gather information about our Sun using
telescopes and space probes, and also look at millions of other stars. They use this information to work
out theories about how and why stars change with time.

Peer review
When you carry out investigations at school, you know that your teacher already knows the answer to the
question. However scientists working in Universities or other research departments do not know the
'answer' to the question they are posing. Their work is checked by the process of peer review.
When a scientist has finished an experiment and drawn a conclusion, she or he writes a paper which
describes the experiment in detail, and gives the results and conclusions. This is sent to a scientific
journal. The editors of the journal send the paper to other scientists in the field for them to review (check).
Sometimes the first scientist is asked to check their results, or amend their conclusions if the reviewers
think they may have made a mistake. This process is anonymous (the scientist's name is taken off the
paper sent out for review, and this scientist does not know who the reviewers are). When the reviewers
are satisfied that the paper is describing a good quality experiment and conclusion, the paper is published
in a journal. (There is more information on peer review on Skills Sheet 5.)

Replication
The checking process continues after a paper is published. If the conclusion is an important new
discovery, or contradicts earlier ideas, other scientists around the world may try to replicate (reproduce)
the same experiment, or try slightly different experiments to answer the same question. Sometimes this
process shows that the authors of the original paper made a mistake.
1

Why is peer review necessary?

Why do you think anonymous peer review is a good idea? Give as many reasons as you can.

Why do scientists publish their results? (There is more than one reason).

Why is it important that other scientists try to replicate experimental results?

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Sheet 2 of 2

SS5 Evaluating claims

Newspaper reports or news broadcasts often include claims for new scientific discoveries or new medical
treatments.

Drinking tea prevents heart attacks!

Often, these claims are exaggerated or sometimes even wrong. Here are some questions that you can
ask to help you to evaluate claims like this.
Are the results published in a scientific journal? Has the study been peer-reviewed?
Scientific papers are peer-reviewed before they are published in scientific journals. This means that other
scientists working in the same area have checked the method and results. A news report taken from a
paper in a scientific journal is more likely to be correct than a report based on talking to a scientist before
his or her work has been peer reviewed.
How was the investigation carried out? Were there controls? Was the test fair? What was the
sample size?
A trial to test whether changing your diet or taking a new medicine has health benefits is quite difficult and
costly to carry out. A good trial would involve:

a lot of people, as people may respond to diet or medicines in different ways

a control group, consisting of people with the same medical problem (for a new medicine), or with
similar diets, health and lifestyles (for a new diet). The control group would not get the new
medicine or the new diet.

blind or double blind trials, if possible. In a blind trial, the subjects do not know whether or not they
are getting the treatment. So, for a new medicine, the control group may be given sugar pills
instead of the medicine. This is because sometimes just the belief that you are being treated can
make you feel better. In a double-blind trial, some of the experimenters (or the patients' doctors) do
not know which patients are getting the new treatment either. This is to make sure that any
judgments they make about the patients' health is not biased by whether or not they expect the
new medicine to be better.

How big was the effect?

A new diet that reduced the chance of a heart attack by 1 in 1 million people would not be worth bothering
with. The number of heart attacks in the population could vary naturally by more than that amount. The
results need to be 'statistically' significant, which means that the new medicine or new diet must make
more difference than can be explained by natural variation.
Could the experimenters have been biased?
Who funded the study? For the headline above, you might be a bit suspicious if the study was paid for by
a tea company. This does not necessarily mean that the study is biased, but it might be. For example, any
bad effects of the new medicine or diet may have been ignored, or made to sound unimportant.
Could the reporters have been biased?
Information about the pollution caused by a power station might be reported very differently by a journalist
working on an environmental magazine and one working on a magazine for the power industry.

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SS6 Constructing an argument

Scientists argue about many things, such as the meaning of a piece of scientific evidence, how a
particular organism should be classified, or the best way of explaining observations. This kind of argument
does not (usually) involve shouting or insulting your opponent!
A good argument contains the following features:

a statement of what you believe

the evidence you are using to support what you believe

a counterargument (objections to what you believe, with evidence)

your response to the counterargument, saying why you think the counterargument is wrong

For example, you might argue that the Earth is a sphere, not a flat disc.
The Earth is spherical.
I think this because:

ships can sail right around the Earth

without reaching an edge

engineers put satellites into orbit using this idea,

and it works

photos of the Earth taken from space

show that it is spherical.

Thisisthestatementofwhatyoubelieve.

Some people say that the Earth must be flat,

as anyone on the 'bottom' of a spherical Earth would just fall off.
However these people don't understand gravity.
Gravity pulls all things together, so everyone on the Earth
is pulled towards the centre of the spherical Earth.

Thisissomeoftheevidenceyou
areusingtobackupyour
argument.
Thisisacounterargument

withareasonfor
thinkingthis.

Andthisistheresponsetothe
counterargument.
You don't normally need to use headings such as 'evidence' or 'counterargument', but you can make
these sections clear by using the right sort of words.
Part of argument

Indicator words

your evidence

I think this because, as, since

a counterargument

Some people say, some people think, you could say that

response to the
counterargument

however, but

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SS7 Units of measurement

Units are important. It is no use telling someone that a reaction happens in 15. Do you mean 15 seconds,
15 minutes or 15 hours?
Whenever you measure something in science, you need to know what the units of measurement are, and
write the units down when you write the number. People in different countries used to use different units
for measuring things. Scientists in different countries often share their results, and using different units
could get confusing. Scientists have agreed that they will all use the same units when they make their
measurements. The units they use are called SI units.
Table 1 shows the SI units that you will use in this course. Some units are combinations of other units.
Table 1 Some SI units

Quantity

Unit

Symbol

length

metre

area

square metres

m2

volume

cubic metres

m3

mass

kilogram

kg

force

newton

momentum

kilogram metres per second

kg m/s

pressure

pascal

Pa (1 Pa = 1 N/m2)

energy

joule

power

watts

current

amperes (amps)

charge

coulomb

potential difference

volts

resistance

ohm

temperature*

degrees Celsius*

time

second

velocity

metres/second

m/s

Acceleration

metres/second/second

m/s2

frequency

hertz

Hz

power (of a lens)

dioptre

concentration

grams per centimetre cubed

amount of substance

moles

D
+

g/cm3
mol

*degrees C is not the SI unit: if you study unit P3 you will learn about the Kelvin scale for temperature
+
a convenient measure of concentration derived from the SI unit

Sometimes the SI units are not a convenient size, so we use bigger or smaller versions. For example, it is
a bit awkward to measure the thickness of a leaf in metres! It is much easier to use millimetres. An extra
part is added to the name of the unit to show when we are using bigger or smaller versions. This is called
a prefix. For example, milli is an example of a prefix that means a thousandth. Table 2 shows some of
the prefixes that are used with SI units.

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Sheet 1 of 2

SS7 Units of measurement (cont.)

Table 2 Standard prefixes

Prefix

Meaning

Symbol

Meaning in
scientific
notation
(see SS10)

tera

1 000 000 000 000

1012

1 TW = 1 million
million watts

giga

1 000 000 000

109

1 GJ = 1 thousand
million joules

mega

1 000 000

106

1 Mhz = 1 million hertz

kilo

1000

103

1 kN = 1 thousand
newtons

centi

1/100

10-2

100 cm = 1 metre

milli

1/1000

10-3

1000 mA = 1 Amp

micro

1/1 000 000

10-6

1 000 000 m = 1
metre

nano

1/1 000 000 000

10-9

1 000 000 000 nm = 1

metre

Example

There are still some units in everyday use that do not fit the standard pattern. Table 3 shows some of
these.
Table 3 Some non-standard units

Quantity

Standard unit

Other units used

miles

length

metres

speed

m/s

light years* (the distance that light travels in

one year approximately 9.5 x 1015 m)
kilometres per hour (km/h)
miles per hour (mph)
litres (l)

volume

m3

1 litre = 1000 cm3

1 ml = 1 cm3
1000 litres = 1 m3

energy

joules

kilowatt-hours* (the energy transferred by a 1

kW appliance in 1 hour)

* be careful with units like these although a light year may sound like a time, it is a unit of distance, and a kilowatthour is a unit of energy, not power or time.

Sheet 2 of 2
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SS8 Different scales

You will come across objects of many different sizes in this course. The size of most everyday things is
easy to understand, but if you are talking about cells and atoms, or stars and galaxies, it is much harder to
appreciate their sizes.
One way of thinking about sizes is to use a scale where each division is 10 times the size of the previous
one. So you can think about things that are 1 mm long, can compare them with objects 1 cm long, then 10
cm, 1 m, 10 m, 100 m, 1 km, and so on. If you search on the internet for Powers of 10 you can find
videos that show you images of things at different scales, from millionths of a millimetre up to millions of
kilometres.
That won't all fit on this worksheet, so the table below shows you the approximate sizes of some different
objects you may learn about.
Getting bigger

Getting smaller

100 m

1 cm (102 m)

Length of running track

Length of fingernail

x 1000

100

100 km (105 m)

0.01 cm(104 m)

Distance from London to Birmingham

Width of human hair

x 1000

100

100 000 km (108 m)

Diameter of the nucleus of a cell

Distance from London to Los Angeles

0.0001 cm (106 m)

x 1000

100

100 000 000 km (1011 m)

0.000 001 cm (108 m)

The distance between Mars and the Sun

Width of a DNA strand

100

100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 km (1026 m)

0.000 000 01 cm (1010 m)

Distance to furthest observed galaxy

Diameter of an atom

0.000 000 000 001 cm (1014 m)

Diameter of the nucleus in an atom

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SS9 Scientific notation

Scientists sometimes have to deal with some very large numbers, and some very small numbers.
For example:

the distance from the Earth to the Sun is approximately 150 000 000 km

the distance from the Earth to Proxima Centauri (the nearest star to the Sun) is nearly
40 000 000 000 000 km

the diameter of a carbon atom is approximately 0.000 000 000 34 m

the size of a red blood cell in the human body is approximately 0.000 000 7 m.

It is easy to make a mistake when writing very large or very small numbers by writing the wrong number
of zeros. Some of these problems can be avoided by writing numbers using scientific notation. This uses
powers of 10.
Scientific notation consists of a number with the decimal point after the first digit, multiplied by a power of
10.
150 000 000 km can be written as 1.5 x 108 km.
40 000 000 000 000 km can be written as 4.0 x 1013 km.
0.000 000 000 34 m can be written as 3.4 x 1010 m.
0.000 05 m can be written as 5.0 x 105 m.
To convert a large number (such as the distance to the Sun) into standard notation:
1

Write the number with a decimal point after the first digit:
1.50000000

Count the number of places you must move the decimal point to put it back to its original position:

1.50000000
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Write the number, without all the zeros at the end, multiplied by 10 to the power of the number you
worked out in part 2. Don't forget to put the units on.
1.5 x 108 km

The same procedure can be used to convert a very small number into scientific notation. Taking the size
of an atom as an example:
1

Write the number with a decimal point after the first non-zero digit:
00000000003.4

Count the number of places you must move the decimal point to put it back to its original position:

00000000003.4
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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SS9 Scientific notation (cont.)

Write the number, without all the zeros at the beginning, multiplied by 10 to the power of the number
you worked out in part 2. This is a negative power of 10, when you have converted a very small
number.
3.4 x 1010 m

Follow the above procedures in reverse to write out the full version of a number in scientific notation.
For a large number:
1

To convert 6.5 x 104, write the number with 4 zeroes after it:
6.50000

Move the decimal point 4 places to the right:

65 000.0

You do not usually need to include the decimal point when the number is very large, like this.
65 000

For a small number:

1

To convert 2.9 x 105, write the number with 5 zeroes in front of it:
000002.9

Move the decimal place 5 places to the left:

0.000029

Questions
1

Convert these numbers into scientific notation.

a 0.000 045 8
b 125 000 000
c 0.000 65
d 150 000

Write these numbers out in full.

a 1.2 x 103
b 5.67 x 109

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