2nd Grade Science Words
WORDS / DEFINITIONS1. **Life Cycle / All the parts of a living thing’s life from birth to death.
2. **Developing / To grow
3. Birth / The act of being born; the act of coming into life.
4. Reproducing / To make or cause to exist again.
5. Death / To end life.
6. Digest / To break down food in the body.
7. **Egg / A round or oval mass from which young animals hatch.
8. **Larva / The stage early in an insect’s life when it looks like a worm.
9. **Pupa / A stage in the lifecycle of certain insects when the larva is changing into an adult.
10. **Chrysalis / The inactive stage in the development of a butterfly or moth during which the larva is enclosed in a tough case from which a fully developed adult eventually emerges.
11. **Adult / A fully grown person, animal or plant.
12. Compare / To examine how two or more people or things are alike and different.
13. Contrast / A difference; unlikeness.
14. **Characteristic / A special feature or quality.
15. Insect / An animal that has three body parts and six legs.
16. **Metamorphosis / The series of stages in the development of some animals from their immature form into adulthood.
17. Change / To make different in some way.
18. Pollinate / To carry pollen and drop it on a flower.
19. Amphibian / An animal that lives both in water and on land.
20. Mammals / Animals with fur or hair that feed milk to their young and whose babies are born alive.
21. Nocturnal / Of or happening at night; active at night.
22. **Habitat / A place where an animal or plant naturally lives and grows.
23. Environment / All the living and nonliving things in a place.
24. Observe / To see or sense through careful attention.
25. Predict / To tell about something before it happens.
26. Omnivore / An animal that eats both animals and plants.
27. Herbivore / An animal that eats only plants.
28. Carnivore / An animal that eats only animals.
29. Predator / An animal that kills other animals and eats them for food.
30. Prey / An animal that is caught and eaten by another animal.
31. Producer / Plants are called producers because they produce their own food!
32. Food web / A model that shows all the possible feeding relationships between organisms living in an ecosystem.
33. Food chain / The order in which animals eat plants and other animals.
34. Ecosystems / Plants, animals and nonliving things that make up an environment and have an effect on each other.
Weather
35. Air / The atmosphere that surrounds the earth.
36. Push / To press against something in order to make it move away.
37. Pull / To tug forward or toward oneself.
38. Blow / To move or cause to move by means of a current of air.
39. **Air pressure / The weight of the air as it presses on the surfaces of objects.
40. Force / The energy, strength or power used against someone or something.
41. **Temperature / The measure of how cold or how hot someone or something is.
42. Wind speed / How fast the wind is blowing.
43. Wind direction / The direction from which the wind is coming.
44. **Precipitation / Water that falls to the earth as rain, snow, hail or sleet.
45. Measure / To find the size, weight, volume or amount of something.
46. Thermometer / A device used to measure temperature usually by the height of a liquid that expands or contracts inside a slender glass tube.
47. Anemometer / A device used to measure wind speed.
48. Wind vane / A thin, flat moveable piece of wood or metal that points in the direction that the wind is blowing.
49. Rain gauge / A device used to measure rainfall.
50. **Weather / The condition or activity of the atmosphere at any given time or place.
51. **Water cycle / The way water moves from the air to the land and back to the air.
52. **Water vapor / Water that has changed into gas.
53. Evaporate / To change from a solid or liquid into a gas; to disappear.
54. Solar / From or of the sun.
55. Condensation / The change of a substance from a gas into a liquid through cooling.
56. Collection / Things gathered together.
57. Cirrus / A kind of cloud that is thin, feathery, and high in the sky.
58. Cumulous / A kind of cloud that looks like puffy white cotton.
59. Stratus / A kind of cloud that is low and gray and stretches across the sky.
60. Climate / Weather that is typical for a certain place including temperature and amounts of rain or wind.
61. Energy / A force having the power to make things move or work.
62. Meteorologist / Someone who reports and forecasts weather conditions.
63. Pollution / Waste that harms land, water, or air.
64. Runoff / Rainfall not absorbed by soil.
65. Humidity / Moisture in the air.
Sound
66. **Sound / Energy that you hear.
67. **Vibration / A rapid motion back and forth.
68. **Frequency / The rate of a repeating movement.
69. **Pitch / How high or low a sound is.
70. **Loudness / How loud or soft a sound is.
71. Instrument / A device to make music.
72. **Membrane / A soft tissue inside the ear than helps you hear.
73. **Inner Ear / The inside part of the ear.
74. **Outer Ear / The outer part of the ear.
75. **Eardrum / The membrane that separates the outer ear and the middle ear and vibrates when sound waves strike it.
76. Vocal Cords / Membranes at the top of the windpipe that vibrate and make sounds when you talk.
77. Echolocation / Sound waves bouncing off objects to tell their location.
Matter
78. Solid / The only form of matter that has a shape of its own.
79. Liquid / A form of matter that does not have its own shape.
80. Gas / The only kind of matter that always fills the space inside a container.
81. Matter / What all things are made of.
82. Mass / The amount of matter an object has.
83. **States of matter / This can be a liquid, gas, or solid.
84. Melting / To change from a solid to a liquid by means of heat.
85. Freezing / To make a liquid into ice by hardening with cold.
86. **Evaporation / The process of water turning into gas.
87. Vapor / Very small bits of something in the air, especially water.
88. Heating / To make or become hot.
89. Transfer / To cause something to move from one place to another.
90. Boiling point / The point at which water begins to bubble. (212 degrees)
91. Freezing point / The point at which water turns from a liquid to a solid. (32 degrees)
92. **Properties / A quality of something.
93. **Combine / To mix or join together.
94. **Separate / To take apart.
95. Reverse / To move something so its position is the opposite of what it had been or inside out.
96. **Mixture / Something made up of two or more things.