How does the planet Earth function within the solar system?
In addition to developing an understanding of Earth's place among the eight known planets of the solar system, fifth-grade students receive instruction regarding the Earth's composition. From its earliest moments to the present day, the Earth has balanced powerful creative and destructive forces, such as volcanoes and earthquakes, as described in the overview of Georgia's performance standards framework for science (See Reference 1). Plate tectonics, gravitation and the phases of the moon are discussed in a fifth-grade classroom alongside of atmospheric cycles and global warming.
How are phenomena such as light, heat and sound measured and explained?
The speed of light is a difficult concept for most adults to grasp, but such a concept can be intriguing to children. Contemplation of such a concept requires students to use their cognitive skills, to reevaluate the universe from a fresh perspective. By contrast, a study of heat focuses a child's attention on the function of matter on an atomic level, while a study of sound permits children to learn that information is conducted invisibly through the air via sound waves much as electricity is conducted through cables and wires.
How are feeding relationships between organisms of an ecosystem represented in food circles?
Over time, energy is shared between organisms. Regardless of its tiny size, a dung beetle is just as valuable to an ecosystem as is a human being. Primary producers, such as plants and algae, use energy from the sun to make compounds. Primary and secondary consumers are creatures that consume primary producers, using the compounds they create as fuel. Decomposers consume these two types of consumers once they have died, enriching the Earth's soil with their waste. Upon this enriched soil, primary producers thrive.
While food chains make feeding relationships between organisms seem simple, such relationships are more complicated in reality. Secondary consumers, for example, "eat the guys that eat the plants and sometimes they eat each other", according to FT Learning (See Reference 2). Thus, fifth-grade students are introduced to comparably more complicated forms of diagramming these relationships by using food webs, which each contain more than one food chain.
How do simple machines operate?
Upon reaching the fifth grade, many children are fascinated by complex machines such as computers or space probes. These modern marvels of human industry are actually elaborate improvements upon earlier compound machines. Compound machines contain two or more simple machines, which include the inclined plane, lever, pulley, wedge, screw and the wheel and axle. According to the North Carolina Curriculum, fifth-grade students are prompted to "build and use a model to solve a mechanical design problem" (See Reference 3). The construction of compound machines, with the aid of two or more simple machines, satisfies this objective.