Chapter 1 Flashcards
BIOLOGY
The scientific study of life
LIFE
the organic phenomenon that distinguishes living organisms from nonliving ones
CELL
A basic unit of living matter separated from its environment by a plasma membrane; the fundamental structural unit of life.
TAXONOMISTS
a biologist that groups organisms into categories.
EMERGENT PROPERTIES
New properties that arise with each step upward in the hierarchy of life, owing to the arrangement and interactions of parts as complexity increases.
ZYGOTE
Azygoteis a fertilized egg.
SCIENCE
Scienceis the field of study concerned with discovering and describing the world around us by observing and experimenting. Biology, chemistry, and physics are all branches ofscience.
HYPOTHESIS
In science, ahypothesisis an idea or explanation that you then test through study and experimentation.
EXPERIMENTS
the act of conducting a controlled test or investigation
DATA
Recorded observations.
THEORY
A widely accepted explanatory idea that is broader in scope than a hypothesis, generates new hypotheses, and is supported by a large body of evidence.
INDEPENDENT VARIABLE
A factor whose value is manipulated or changed during an experiment to reveal possible effects on another factor (the dependent variable).
DEPENDENT VARIABLE
A factor whose value is measured in an experiment to see whether it is influenced by changes in another factor (the independent variable).
CONTROLLED EXPERIMENT
An experiment in which an experimental group is compared with a control group that varies only in the factor being tested.
EVOLUTION
Descent with modification; the idea that living species are descendants of ancestral species that were different from present-day ones; also, the genetic changes in a population from generation to generation.
