8th Grade Science
Final Exam Study Guide
1. What does the Law of Superposition say?
2. Which layer of rock in the diagram below would contain fossils of earlier, less complex forms of
life?
3. What does classification mean and how do you do it?
4. What is it that makes meteorologists better able to predict weather today than in the past?
5. According to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale pictured below, what are the MINIMUM
requirements for a tropical storm to be classified as a hurricane?
6. What usually causes a tsunami?
7. Compare the thickness and density of the crust and mantle of the Earth.
8. Name the three types of plate boundaries and describe the movement that happens at each.
9. Which type of plate boundary causes mountains? Ocean trench? Volcano? Earthquake only?
Mid-ocean ridge?
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10. What type of plate boundary exists along the San Andreas fault in California?
11. Describe what causes the movement of Earth’s crustal plates?
12. How can we prove that the results of an experiment are valid?
13. What is a hypothesis? A theory?
14. What is genetic engineering? What are some of the concerns surrounding genetic engineering?
15. A student performs an investigation in which she grows 20 tomato plants of the same variety
under the exact same conditions of water, sunlight, and soil. The only thing she does not keep the
same is the amount of fertilizer. She adds no fertilizer to 10 of the plants. To the other 10 plants,
she adds 20 mL of Miracle-Gro fertilizer every other day. After 10 days, she measures the height
of each plant. The 10 plants given no fertilizer were 30 cm tall, while the 10 plants given MiracleGro fertilizer were 45 cm tall. What hypothesis was she testing with this experiment?
16. Define :
a. Independent variable:
b. Depenent variable:
c. Control group:
d. Experimental group:
17. In the experiment described in number 15, what is the independent variable? The dependent
variable? The control group? The experimental group?
18. What category of organism is missing from the food web below?
8th Grade Science
Final Exam Study Guide
19. What is an herbivore? Give an example.
20. What is a producer? Give an example.
21. What is a carnivore? Give an example.
22. Put the organisms below in the correct order to make a food chain.
Mouse, seeds, hawk, snake
23. What is a decomposer? Give some examples.
24. Consider the organisms in the energy pyramid below. Which organisms make the energy of the
Sun available to all of the other organisms in the pyramid?
25. Give an example of a producer-consumer relationship from the food chain below.
26. Give an example of a predator-prey relationship from the food chain above.
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27. What concept is the cartoon below trying to illustrate?
28. What is an autotroph? Give and example.
29. Some rabbits’ fur color changes from brown to white when colder temperatures of winter begin.
How does this happen and what is its purpose?
30. What is an ecosystem?
31. List the biological levels of organization from simple to complex.
32. How does DNA fingerprinting work to help determine the identity or relatedness of individuals?
33. As a human, you have 46 chromosomes. How many did you get from your mother?
34. A child has red hair but both of his parents have brown hair. Who did he get the red hair from?
35. What is heredity?
36. Do changes in body cells or sex cells get passed from parent to offspring? (Circle one.)
37. Compare sexual and asexual reproduction.
38. Compare selective breeding with genetic engineering.
8th Grade Science
Final Exam Study Guide
39. Why haven’t’ humans been cloned yet (that we know of) even though animals such as sheep have
been?
40. How would deforestation affect an ecosystem?
41. How would pollution of a body of water affect the water ecosystem?
42. List five renewable sources of energy and an advantage and disadvantage of each.
43. List some examples of nonrenewable sources of energy. Why are they considered nonrenewable?
44. What are some things you could do to positively impact the environment?
45. What does the picture below illustrate?