"An Irving Place Press book." "In collaboration with UFT Dial-A-Teacher"--Cover Includes index
Contents:
Part 1 What's life about?: Living or non living? Organisms The five kingdoms Plant and animal cells The king's subjects: classifying living things Part 2 The animal kingdom: The invertebrates Vertebrate or invertebrate? Don't bug me! Insects The vertebrates The cold-blooded truth: the difference between warm- and cold-blooded animals Talking it over: animal communication Animal relatives Dinosaurs Animal champions Who eats what or whom? How animals reproduce Baby animals Part 3 The plant kingdom: Plants The first plants Making seeds: conifers and flowering plants Plant parts Leaves Stems Roots How plants reproduce Reproduction by seeds Reproduction without seeds Photosynthesis, respiration, and transpiration Part 4 Ecology and the landscapes of life: Biomes Grasslands Deserts Scrublands Deciduous forests Tundra Coniferous forests Tropical rain forests Ecology Ecosystems Plant and animal behavior Environmental issues and conservation Too many people Extinct and endangered species Pollution Some conservation stats you should know Ozone destruction Global warming and the greenhouse effect Acid rain Conservation begins at home Part 5 Planet Earth: Earth, then and now Dating the Earth The land Rocks, minerals, and soil The rock cycle Common rocks The measure of a mineral: Mohs Scale Land Pangaea: get my drift? Landforms Natural rubdowns: erosion and weathering The world's highest mountains Natural events that shape the land On a scale of 1 to 10: the Richter Scale Earthquake: major earthquakes Catch the wave! Tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanoes The lava flows: major volcanic eruptions The water Oceans and seas The briny deep: ocean trenches and depths Making waves Tidal times Lakes A jump in the lake: noteworthy lakes around the world Rivers River journeys: the world's longest rivers Glaciers Glaciers and the land The atmosphere Atmospheric pressure Weather and climate Weather words: talk like the TV forecaster Heat from the sun Air Meeting of the masses: weather fronts The winds at home: wind names Beaufort scale World's fastest winds: jet streams Water Clouds Predicting the weather Precipitation Storms Part 6 Outer space: Stars and galaxies The Big Bang theory: about the sun and planets The Earth and the moon Day of darkness: solar eclipse Phases of the moon Lunar eclipse Ateroids, meteors, and comets Space exploration --Why explore space? Chronology of space exploration Part 7 The physical world: Matter Volume Mass Atoms and molecules Atoms A table of elements: the Periodic Table Molecules Changing matter Acid test Energy, motion, and work Heat and temperature Heat Temperature A lukewarm experiment: John Locke and temperature Galileo's thermometer Fahrenheit and Celsius Fahrenheit to Celsius Kelvin Measuring heat Hot stuff: calories Heat and matter How heat flows Teakettle test: how heat travels Light Reflection The law of reflection Refraction Oasis in the desert: mirages Speed of light Spectrum Sound How sound travels The speed of sound How loud is it? Decibels Sound effects Ultrasounds: sounds that can't be heard Electricity and magnetism Don't give me static - electricity, that is Electrical current Circuits Measuring electricity Ohm's Law Magnetism Generating electricity
