All Ward Science Vocab
Ward Science Vocab... Haven O might have about the same also... Feel free to make changes if they seem necessary.
Terms
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- solute
- Sea salt.
- Capillarity
- Liquid moving through a medium against gravity.
- Radula
- A bar of teeth that an animal uses to drill into another animal's shell. This weakens the shell so it pops open. Then the animal using the drill puts his/her stomach into the other animal's shell and eats the other animal.
- Constant
- The things that are kept the same each time one of the trials in the experiment is repeated.
- Hinge
- The part that attaches the two shells of the bivalve.
- Fahrenheit
- the american measure of temperature
- aperture
- The opening in a gastropod where the mollusk can come out to move and to eat.
- Accretion
- An expansion made by natural growth (a beach accretes when calm waves carry sand to shore). The opposite of erosion.
- Cilia
- Hairs in the gills that make a current to push water into the mouth.
- gonad
- releases sex cells (can have sperm and eggs, releases them at different times)
- adaptation
- An alteration by an organism to become better fitted to survive and multiply in its environment.
- dH2O
- Distilled water
- Larvae
- the younger morphic stage of mollusks before adulthood
- Inlet
- The water between barrier islands, also known as the water that separates the barrier islands from the sound.
- Inhalent Siphon
- The siphon through which water travels into the mollusk.
- Maritime forest
- The forest before you get to the beach filled with trees and other wildlife.
- anterior
- front end
- supratidal
- zone of the shoreline habitat above the high tide line where tidal water generally does not reach. (SCL glossary)
- Barrier Island
- A long strip of land that is parallel to the mainland, offering protection from the ocean forces. It is also durable and flexible. It is the "border" between the sound and the sea. It is made bigger by the long shore current/ smaller/ changing its size.
- Storm Surge
- The rise in sea level along the coastline caused by two things: 1) strength of wind 2) coastal bight- geography of coastline
- Brackish
- Salt water mixed with fresh water making mildly salty water. 15-25 PPT.
- Spire
- Top part of gastropod shell. It is made of whorls.
- Mollusca
- The Phylum that contains the classes Bivalva and Gastropoda. This phylum contains seven more class, but we are only interested in these two.
- umbo
- The oldest part of the bivalves; a beak.
- Ligament
- A tough material that holds the bi-valve together. It takes great strength to open.
- zooplankton
- Floating microscopic animals, including the larval stages of many larger animals. Feed on phytoplankton and other zooplankton.
- Bivalve
- Literaly 2 shells. Some examples are scallops, oysters, and clams.
- intertidal zone
- The zone of the shoreline habitat between the low and high tide lines alternately covered by water and exposed to air during the daily tidal cycle. (SCL glossary).
- Phytoplankton
- Floating microscopic plants, which are important producers in marine food webs.
- Percolation
- A liquid moving through a medium in the same direction as gravity.
- valve
- shell
- Decomposer
- An organism such as a bacterium or fungus, which uses tissues of dead plants and animals as an energy and nutrient source (SCL, glossary) and, in this process, breaks down organic matter into inorganic matter.
- Exhalent siphon
- the siphon through which water exits the mollusk
- hypothesis
- a question which has been reworded into a form that can be tested by an experiment
- environment
- All the conditions, factors, and influences, living and non-living, which surround an organism or group of organisms.
- Salt Marsh
- This edges the sound-side shorelines of North Carolina's barrier islands and mainland.
- experimental procedure
- A step-by-step list that shows how you will go about proving the questions posed in the hypothesis.
- Veliger
- A baby gastropod is called a ... for the first 5-12 weeks of its life. ... are too small to be able to move around with their heavy shells weighing them down, so they have winglike structures for swimming and feeding. There are cilia on the structures that help the ... move around. At the end of the 5-12 weeks, the ... undergo torsion and become mini-adults.
- Control
- This is used to compare and contrast with other data. A control is a trial in an experiment to which others are compared. A negative control does not contain the factor being tested (the independent variable) and is known to give a negative result.
- substrate
- the bottom of a habitat
- Whorl
- each separate coil in a gastropod
- Saltation
- The geological process of dune building. Gentle wave action brings sand and sediment ashore causing beach accretion. Winds blowing at > 10 miles per hour will pick up fine particles of sand depositing them on the dune. This is also why dune sand is finer then beach sand.
- ventral
- near the lower surface
- Periostracum
- A brownish "outer skin" that hides the beautiful colors and patterns of the shell underneath it. When the mollusk dies, it is lost, and the shell's surface is revealed.
- Experimental Science
- The search for cause and effect relationships in nature. A hypothesis is your best guess at what this cause and effect relationship is. Your conclusions allow you to predict the result of future cause and effect relationships.
- Erosion
- To be made smaller. Strong wave action does this to the beach, taking sand from the shore.
- Science
- the methodical approach to the acquisition of knowledge
- Mantle
- Fleshy membrane inside of shell that is responsible for shell production and color and cellular processes such as respiration
- Trial
- repetition of a level of the IV
- Foot
- helps the clam move about and the foot burrows into the sand like a shovel.
- Turbulence
- The velocity and overall movement of water. It is what determines substrate.
- cephalo
- head
- Dependent variable
- The variable in an experiment that is measured; the measurement.
- hermaphrodite
- An organism with both male and female characteristics.
- Longshore current
- Because waves hit the beach at an angle, a current is created that runs along the beach parallel to the shore. Sand and sediment are carried in this current, along with your beach ball and even you if you are bodysurfing! On the NC shore, the Longshore Current generally runs from N to S.
- Theory
- An idea that has been tested thoroughly and, despite extensive testing, cannot be rejected. It is as close to the truth as we can get... while still admitting that we cannot eliminate the rest of the possible hypotheses.
- Taxonomy
- The naming of something using two words.
- dorsal
- near the upper surface
- Turbidity
- The cloudiness of water.
- anthropologist
- A person who works in the field of the origins of mankind and the social aspect of it
- detritus
- Minute particles of decaying organic material.
- siphon
- a projecting tubular part of some animals, esp. certain mollusks, through which liquid enters or leaves the body.
- Food Capturer
- An animal that actively chases its prey.
- Trial
- Repetition of a level of the independent variable in an experiment.
- Bight
- The topography, or curviness, of a coastline. Affects local currents and wave action.
- level
- a specific concentration of the IV. For example, the four ... in an experiment testing the effect of salinity on brine shrimp hatching are: 0ppt, 20ppt, 40ppt and 80ppt.
- Bi-
- Prefix. Means 2.
- Celsius
- The metric unit of temperature measurement.
- subtidal
- * zone of the shoreline habitat below the low tide line, always covered by water
- tentacles
- sensory objects that sensor the smell and taste and detect chemicals in the area. these then send signs back to the cerebral ganglia
- Operculum
- The "trap door" some gastropods have. It is a piece of shell attached to the foot of the gastropod. Used to seal the aperture when the organism is inside it's shell which provides protection from predators and drying out.
- apex
- the top of a shell
- Mollusk
- any invertabrate having a ''soft body' containing a mantle and a shell, used for protection, rigidity or camo.
- nauplii
- The larval state for most crustaceans.
- Palps
- Sorts food from silt and substrate then moves food to the mouth.
- Ribs
- Horizontal lines on the clam starting from the umbo rings: the lines along the shell [horizontal], determines the age of the mollusk/ shell
- Cohesion
- Attractive forces between water (H2O) molecules.
- teeth
- notches at the end of either shell in a bivalve that helps them clamp together
- wetlands
- An area of land saturated with water. They provide protection against storm surges in three ways. 1. Lower Temperature of Water (no heat energy for the storm) 2.Trees provide a wind break. 3. Wetlands absorb water from the surge of water.
- Saline
- Pertaing to, resembling common table salt. (a ------ solution)
- posterior
- rear end
- Consumers
- Animals, which must eat plants, other animals, or eat both plants and animals to obtain nutrients and energy.
- adductor muscle
- A major muscle for bivalves that closes the bivalve
- adhesion
- Attraction of one water molecule to a surface.
- H2O
- Water
- Plankton
- Swept about without will, unable to move against the effects of tides and currents.
- gastropod
- literally "stomach foot"; a class of Mollusks characterized by a well-developed head, a stomach and a foot
- Labial Palps
- Tells whatever comes into the shell where to go.
- Salinity
- How much salt is in water, measured by parts per thousand (PPT).
- gastro
- stomach
- Independent variable
- The variable in an experiment that is changed.
- Pore Spaces
- The spaces in between grains of things, which water runs through. Little particles have little pore spaces, and big particles have big pore spaces.
- Hurricane
- An intense rotating oceanic weather system with a minimum sustained winds of 114 km/h or 75 mph.
- NOAA
- N: national O: oceanographic A: atmospheric A: administration
- Poda
- foot
- Body Whorl
- The whorl which contains the aperture of the shell in which one can fine the body of the mollusk.
- level
- When in a lab you change the amount or concentration of the independent variable for different trials.
- Torsion
- When the veliger twists the top of its body 180 degrees and folds itself in half. It does this so that it can fit its bottom in the shell and its foot and head out of the shell, but still get its whole body inside the shell when it needs to. this happens rapidly, and is undergone in between the veliger and mini-adult stages.
- PPT
- Parts Per Thousand
- ecology
- the study of all the relationships between an organism and its enviornment