Next Generation Science Standards

Performance Expectations:

• HS-LS1-2. Develop and use a model to illustrate the hierarchical organization of interacting systems that provide specific functions within multicellular organisms.
• HS-LS1-3. Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that feedback mechanisms maintain homeostasis. (Section 2 - note that it is the robot that is maintaining the homeostasis).
• HS-PS4-2. Evaluate questions about the advantages of using digital transmission and storage of information.
• HS-PS4-5. Communicate technical information about how some technological devices use the principles of wave behavior and wave interactions with matter to transmit and capture information and energy.

Disciplinary Core Ideas:

• LS1.A: Structure and Function
  • Multicellular organisms have a hierarchical structural organization, in which any one system is made up of numerous parts and is itself a component of the next level.
  • Feedback mechanisms maintain a living system’s internal conditions within certain limits and mediate behaviors, allowing it to remain alive and functional even as external conditions change within some range. Feedback mechanisms can encourage (through positive feedback) or discourage (negative feedback) what is going on inside the living system.
• PS4.A: Wave Properties
  • Information can be digitized (e.g., a picture stored as the values of an array of pixels); in this form, it can be stored reliably in computer memory and sent over long distances as a series of wave pulses.
• PS4.C: Information Technologies and Instrumentation
  • Multiple technologies based on the understanding of waves and their interactions with matter are part of everyday experiences in the modern world (e.g., medical imaging, communications, scanners) and in scientific research. They are essential tools for producing, transmitting, and capturing signals and for storing and interpreting the information contained in them.

Crosscutting Concepts:

• Systems and System Models
• Models (e.g., physical, mathematical, computer models) can be used to simulate systems and interactions—including energy, matter, and information flows—within and between systems at different scales.
• Stability and Change
• Feedback (negative or positive) can stabilize or destabilize a system.
• Systems can be designed for greater or lesser stability.
• Cause and Effect
• Empirical evidence is required to differentiate between cause and correlation and make claims about specific causes and effects.
• Cause and effect relationships can be suggested and predicted for complex natural and human designed systems by examining what is known about smaller scale mechanisms within the system.