8th Grade Science

  Welcome to grade 8 science, where you will develop an understanding and appreciation for the connection between humans and the natural world. You will practice gathering, compiling, observing and analyzing information - leading to a greater ability to explore and learn from the world around you.  At the beginning of each unit you will receive a detailed syllabus for your review and parent signature. Below is an overview of the year.

Unit 1: Evolution in organisms and landforms (earth history): You will learn how humans study the natural history of our earth and explore questions still left unanswered by science.

• Relative dating and radioactive dating
• Evidence of earth's history: fossils, ice cores, composition of sedimentary rock, faults, igneous formations in rock layers
• Natural Selection
• Evolutionary theory

• Cells and cell processes; membrane transport, cell respiration and photosynthesis
• Basic characteristics of viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites relating to the spread, treatment and prevention of disease
• Epidemic and pandemic; immunity and disease
• Biotechnology in North Carolina
• Careers, economics, ethics, implications for agriculture

• Properties of matter and changes that occur in matter
• Periodic Table; properties and interactions of elements
• Chemical reactions
• Balancing equations; the law of conservation of matter
• Energy; conservation and transfer
• Environmental consequences of the various methods of obtaining, transforming and distributing water, food and electricity.
• Implications of the depletion of renewable and nonrenewable energy resources and importance of conservation.
• Benefits and risks associated with chemicals.

• Population ecology
• Relationships; producers, consumers, decomposers, co-existence, cooperation, competition.
• Relationships between the cycling of food, matter and energy
• North Carolina ecosystems.

Unit 5; Hydrology: This unit  will require you to conduct independent and group research and to apply your knowledge to current events. In this culminating unit of the year, you will apply all that you have learned thus far to a subject of great importance to human cultures....water!

• Distribution of water on earth
• North Carolina river basins and water availability
• Investigation of water quality; temperature, DO, pH, nitrates, phosphates, turbidity, bio-indicators
• Oceans as a reservoir of nutrients, minerals, dissolved gases and life forms.
• Ocean ecosystems; estuaries, marine ecosystems, upwelling, behavior of gases in a marine environment, deep ocean research
• Stewardship and human impact.