It's important that the scientifically literate person understands and accurately applies appropriate science concepts, principles, laws, and theories in interacting with society and the environment. Here are the concepts.
Change: The process of becoming different. It may involve several stages.
Interaction: When two or more things influence or affect each other.
Orderliness: The sequence which either exists in nature or is imposed through classification.
Organism: A living thing or something that was once alive.
Perception: The interpretation of sensory input by the brain.
Symmetry: A repetition of a pattern within some larger structure.
Force: A push or pull.
Quantification: Numbers can be used to convey important information.
Reproducibility: The repetition of a procedure should produce the same results if all other conditions are identical. It is a necessary characteristic of scientific experiments.
Cause and Effect: The belief that natural phenomena do not occur randomly. It enables predictions to be made.
The Chaos theory has caused some rethinking of this principle.
Predictability: Patterns can be identified in nature. From those patterns inferences can be made.
Conservation : An understanding of the finite nature of the world's resources, and an understanding of the necessity to treat those resources with prudence and economy, are underlying principles of conservation. In physics, the term 'conservation' also has a unique meaning, as in the conservation of energy.
Energy-matter: It is the interchangeable and dependent relationship between energy and matter.
Cycle: Certain events or conditions that repeat themselves
Model: A representation of a real structure, event, or class of events intended to facilitate a better understanding of abstract concepts or to allow scaling to a manageable size.
System: A set of interrelated parts
Field: A region of space which is influenced by some agent.
Population: A population is a group of organisms that share common characteristics.
Probability: The relative degree of certainty that can be assigned to certain events happening in a specified time interval or within a sequence of events.
Theory: A connected and internally consistent group of statements, equations, models, or a combination of these, which serves to explain a relatively large and diverse group of things and events.
Accuracy: Recognizing that there is uncertainty in measurement, this involves the correct use of significant figures.
Fundamental Entities: These are units of structure or function which are useful in explaining certain phenomena. Example: The cell is the basic unit of organic structure. The atom is the basic unit of molecular structure.
Invariance: This is a characteristic which stays constant even though other things may change. Example: Mass is conserved in a chemical reaction
Scale: A change in dimensions. This may affect other characteristics of a system.
Time-space: The mathematical framework in which it is convenient to describe objects and events.
Evolution: The series of changes that can be used to explain how something got to be the way it is or what it might become in the future. It is generally regarded as going from simple to complex.
Amplification: An increase in magnitude of some detectable phenomenon.
Equilibrium: The state in which there is no change on the macroscopic level and no net forces on the system.
Gradient: A gradient is a description of a pattern or variation. The description includes both the magnitude and the direction of the change (Light intensity decreases in a predictable manner as the distance from the light source increases).
Resonance: The action within one system which causes a similar action within another system.
Significance: The belief that certain differences exceed those that would be expected to be caused by chance alone
Validation: A belief that similar relationships obtained by two or more different methods reflect an accurate representation of the situation being investigated.
Entropy: The randomness, or disorder, in a collection of things. It can never decrease in a closed system. Example: When salt is dissolved in water, its particles are dispersed randomly