Science 20

Unit 1: Chemical Changes

How solutions, oxidation-reduction reactions and hydrocarbons drive the chemistry of everyday life — from batteries and metal extraction to the fuels and plastics of Alberta's petrochemical industry.

• Dissolving as a prerequisite for reactions
• Electrolytes vs nonelectrolytes
• Expressing concentration
• Calculating concentration
• Diluting solutions

• Balancing single-replacement equations
• Reactivity of metals
• Single-replacement reactions and mole ratios
• Defining oxidation, reduction and spontaneity
• Voltaic and electrolytic cells
• Metal extraction and corrosion protection

• Materials from the petrochemical industry
• Physical characteristics of hydrocarbons
• IUPAC naming and structural formulas
• Refining and catalytic cracking
• Important hydrocarbon reactions

Unit 2: Changes in Motion

The physics of moving objects — describing motion with vectors, predicting it with kinematics, and explaining collisions and safety with momentum, Newton's laws and energy.

• Scalars and vectors
• Velocity and acceleration
• Uniform vs uniformly accelerated motion

• Defining momentum
• Conservation of momentum
• Impulse and safety devices
• Newton's first law and inertia
• Newton's second law
• Newton's third law
• Potential energy, kinetic energy and work

Unit 3: The Changing Earth

Reading Earth's deep history — from seismic waves and plate tectonics to the fossil and glacial records that reveal how the planet, its climate and its life have changed over billions of years.

• Challenges of studying deep time
• How geologic theories have changed

• Seismic waves and earthquake energy
• The Richter scale
• P-waves, S-waves and surface waves
• Seismic waves and Earth's interior
• The layers of Earth
• Evidence for plate tectonics
• Convection and the driving force of plate tectonics

• Radioisotopes and dating
• Types of fossilization
• Reading sedimentary rock layers
• The four geologic eras
• The rise of atmospheric oxygen

• Evidence of glaciation
• Ice cores as climate records
• Causes of climate change and mass extinctions

Unit 4: Changes in Living Systems

How living systems change — the ecology of ecosystems and succession, the biogeochemical cycles and energy flow that sustain them, and the evolution and population dynamics that reshape life over time.

• Analyzing a local ecosystem
• Primary succession and climax communities
• Primary vs secondary succession
• Impact of habitat destruction
• Introducing or removing a species

• The biogeochemical cycles
• Factors affecting the cycles
• Energy flow in an ecosystem
• Trophic levels and ecological pyramids

• Variation and the forces of evolution
• Adaptation of species over time
• Evidence for natural selection
• Gradualism vs punctuated equilibrium
• Factors affecting population size
• Human population growth