Unit 3 Vocabulary

The way something is shaped or what it is made out of that makes it good for a specific function.

• Organism

• Population

• Structure

• Biomimicry

Getting engineering ideas from organisms’ traits.

• Biomimicry

• Function

• Non-adaptive

• Organism

An animal that hunts and eats other animals.

• Variation

• Trait

• Predator

Observations or measurements recorded in an investigation.

• Reproduce

• Data

• Organism

• Structure

Something new made to solve a problem.

• Design

• Survive

• Explanation

• Inference

Something you figure out based on observations or what you already know.

• Adaptive

• Population

• Inference

• Survive

To stay alive.

• Environment

• Survive

• Non-adpative

• Adaptive

1. Making it harder for an organism to meet its needs in an environment.

• Criteria

• Reproduce

• Non-adaptive

• Design

1. A description of how something works or why something happens.

• Engineer

• Explanation

• Design

• Survive

Something that can be observed about an organism, such as color or size.

• Trait

• Structure

• Function

• Criteria