Cross Cutting Concepts
Systems and System Models
Defining the system under study-specifying its boundaries and making explicit a model for that system-provides tools for understanding and testing ideas that are applicable throughout science and engineering.
Patterns
Observed patterns of forms and events guide organization and classification, and they prompt questions about relationships and the factors that influence them.
Energy and Matter
Flows, cycle,s and conservation. Tracking fluxes of energy and matter into, out of, and within systems helps one understand the systems' possibilities and limitations.
Scale, Proportion, and Quantity
In considering phenomena, it is critical to recognize what is relevant at different measures of size, time, and energy and to recognize how changes in scale, proportion, or quantity affect a system's structure or performance.
Stability and Change
For natural and built systems alike, conditions of stability and determinants of rates of change or evolution of a system are critical elements of study.
Cause and Effect: Mechanism and Explanation
Mechanism and explanation. Events have causes, sometimes simple, sometimes multifaceted. A major activity of science is investigating and explaining causal relationships and the mechanisms by which they are mediated. Such mechanisms can then be tested across given contexts and used to predict and explain events in new contexts.
Structure and Function
The way in which an object or living thing is shaped and its substructure determine many of its properties and functions.