Change, Evolution, Equilibrium Concepts
See also: Cross cutting concepts - constancy, change, and measurement and Life science - Organisms, Behavior, Diversity, Adaptation, Reproduction, Life cycles, Heredity, Micro-organisms, and Disease
Initial perceptual naive misconceptions (any age)
Misconceptions (Explanations, Naive understanding, Misconceptions, or Perceptual responses)
Beginning (preschool - 7 years)
Concepts
Change and evolution
- Change can be fast or slow. An organism's form is related to its environment.
- Modern organisms may resemble extinct organisms.
- Objects and organisms can be changed to function for better or worse.
Equilibrium
- Changes can balance.
Intermediate (7 years - 11 years)
Concepts
Change and evolution
- Changes may not be noticed on a scale of a human's life time.
- However, these changes become large as the number of lifetimes become large.
Equilibrium
- Objects and events move toward equilibrium (sugar in water disperses throughout the liquid, pendulum swings until it stops at the lowest point, water flows…
Literate (11+)
Concepts
Change and evolution
- Present conditions such as the salt in the oceans, continental drift, erosion of land forms, changes in organisms... can be explained as gradual and sporadic.
- Evolution is the idea of the present arising from materials and forms of the past.
- Sometimes a series of changes occurs so slowly or so rapidly that it is difficult to document the evolution.
- In evolving systems, change can be gradual, steady, repetitive, irregular, or in more than one way at the same time. For example: whales blow holes moved from the snout to the top of the head in 3 million years. Polar bears developed the ability to survive on a high fat diet of seal blubber in 300 000 years. Chinook salmon body size decreased in response to commercial fishing in 90 years. Mosquitoes colonized London's Underground in 1863 and now can not mate with their above-ground relatives. Green anole lizards at Indian River Lagoon, Florida adapted to the invasion of brown anoles with larger toepads and more scalesto climb higher and cling better to branches in 15 years. Tawny owls come in two colors: light gray and reddish brown. As the climate becomes milder with less snow there has been a steady increase in the proportion of red brown owls. Discover Magazine. Life in the Fast Lane by . March 2015.
- Human design suggests current features of the human body are designs that have been handed down, or evolved, to create human properties for characteristics that could have been designed better. Features like an appendix, tender naked skin prone to cuts, bruises, bites, and sunburn, back or spinal column that is efficient for four legged creatures than two or bipedal creatures, prtuberances above the nostrils, weak teeth that are prone to tooth decay, slow runners, weak animals ( chimps are three times as strong humans even thought they are smaller than us), a brain that stacks brain parts from a brain stem, to a hind brain (respiration, balance, alertness - .5 billion years old from dinosaurs), mid brain (visual, auditory, reflexes and controls eye movement), and fore brain (language, culture, and decision making). ... However, humans are able to detect a single photon in the dark and are able to hear sound a sound wave that is less than the diameter of hydrogen atom, and hemoglobin is able to adapt to differen air pressures.