Name: __________________________________ Hour: _____________
Science Is A Way Of Knowing
(Construct a Concept)
Category
Name:
BeriBeri
Penicillin
Bart Simpson
SpongeBob
& Patrick
MythBusters
Your
Team’s
Definition
of each
column
Book
Definition
of each
column
Science Is A Way of Knowing Stories:
The Strange Case of BeriBeri
In 1887 a strange nerve disease attacked the people in the Dutch East Indies. The disease was
beriberi. Symptoms of the disease included weakness and loss of appetite, victims often died of heart
failure. The scientists read medical books and found several other similar diseases that were caused
by bacteria. Scientists thought the disease might be caused by bacteria. They injected chickens with
bacteria from the blood of patients with beriberi. The injected chickens became sick. However, so did
a group of chickens that were not injected with bacteria.
One of the scientists, Dr. Eijkman, noticed something. Before the experiment, all the chickens had
eaten whole-grain rice, but during the experiment, the chickens were fed polished rice. Dr. Eijkman
researched this interesting case. He found that polished rice lacked thiamine, a vitamin necessary for
good health.
How Penicillin Was Discovered
In 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming was studying Staphylococcus bacteria growing in
culture dishes. He noticed that a mold called Penicillium was also growing in some of
the dishes. A clear area existed around the mold because all the bacteria that had
grown in this area had died. He thought this was strange so he looked in the culture
dishes without the mold and no clear areas were present. The bacteria had not died
in these. Fleming thought that the mold must be producing a chemical that killed the
bacteria. He decided to isolate this substance and test it to see if it would kill bacteria. Fleming
transferred the mold to a nutrient broth solution. This solution contained all the materials the mold
needed to grow. After the mold grew, he removed it from the nutrient broth. Fleming then added the
nutrient broth in which the mold had grown to a culture of bacteria. He observed that the bacteria died
in the cultures he added the mold nutrient broth to.
Bart Simpson Grows Vegetables
Bart Simpson loves to grow broccoli for his dad, Homer, who loves big, colorful
broccoli. He found a new brand of seeds coated with a special “booster” fertilizer that
said it would produce huge vegetables. He went and talked to Apu, who is a great
gardener, and asked him if he thought fertilizer could cause vegetables to grow
bigger. Apu said he thinks so. So Bart planted 5 of the new seeds in one container
and 5 of the old brand of seeds in another container. He placed both containers on a
sunny windowsill and watered them every day. He measured the diameter of each
plant, which is shown in the chart.
Old Seeds
10 cm
12 cm
14 cm
6 cm
8 cm
New Seeds
8 cm
14 cm
10 cm
12 cm
16 cm
SpongeBob and Patrick Go Deep Sea Diving
SpongeBob and Patrick love to go deep sea diving. They wondered if a new brand of diving suit
would help them dive deeper. They wondered why and checked online. They found that they new
suit has a new type of material that is supposed to help with going deeper faster and it has more
weight. They definitely thought this new suit would be better. To test their idea, they bought one new
suit and used one old suit for their next 3 trips to their top-secret diving spot. SpongeBob dived with
the old suit, while Patrick used the new suit. Both of them kept track of how deep they were able to
dive in 30 minutes, which is shown in the chart.
SpongeBob
Patrick
30
31
18
28
26
25
Mythbusters Get Green Thumbs
The Mythbusters team uncovers the myth of if you talk to your plants they will grow better. They start
by talking to a botanist (a person who studies plants) and the botanist says that they don’t really
know, but they doubt it. Jamie and Adam put the myth to the test thinking that the extra talking will not
help the plants grow more. They buy two ivies. Both plants will get the same amount of water and
sunlight but they will each talk to only one plant for 5 minutes each day. They measure the height of
each plant at the end of each week for one month. At the end of one month, the plant that did not get
the extra talking was 2cm taller.
Category Book Definitions:
Book Definition
Category Name
Focusing an
State the Question
observation. Beginning
with how, when, why,
where, or how is a
good start.
Process of finding out what is
already known about a subject.
An educated guess.
Gather Information
Form a Hypothesis
Conducting an experiment Test /Observe
Graphs, tables, data Results
and charts that
describe the
findings in an
experiment
Based on analyzing the results
you should be able to describe
whether to accept or reject the
hypothesis.
Conclusion