Science Practice Questions

1. Why is the arrow pointing to the predator?

The arrow indicates the flow of energy between organisms. Since the upper
trophic level eats the lower trophic level, the flow of energy would be from low to
high because of energy transfer.

2. Similarities between Carbon and nitrogen cycle

They all require plants and life to exist. However, when used wrongly, it could
have deadly consequences on Earth, for example a lot of carbon dioxide leads to
global warming and a lot of nitrogen leads to eutrophication.

3. Explain the nitrogen cycle

There are three steps in the nitrogen cycle: nitrogen fixation, nitrifying and
denitrifying parts. Nitrogen in the atmosphere comes down to the soil by lighting
or precipitation and gets converted into ammonia. However plants cannot use
ammonia, and the nitrifying bacteria converts ammonia into nitrate, where the
plants can use this. The animal eats the plants and the waste gets released to
ammonia. The denfriting bacteria converts the nitrates into nitrogen in the
atmosphere, and the cycle starts again. The nitrogen cycle is important because it
helps the plant to grow.

4. Relationship between carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases

5. Explain the phosphorus cycle

Phosphorus cycle occurs when rocks weather and come into contact with the soil
and water. Phosphate gets released into the soil and the plants absorb this from
the roots and grow.
6. Explain the water cycle
Water is cycled in the ecosystem. Water falls down by precipitation, and goes to
the oceans and lakes again by surface runoff or by percolation. The water gets
back to the air by transpiration from plants or water vapor by oceans.

7. Explain the carbon cycle

Carbon is in the atmosphere and used by plants by photosynthesis to create
materials for cellular respiration. Plants and animals go through cellular
respiration and release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

8. Why do plants use so much carbon?

Because plants use carbon dioxide to use photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is a
crucial part in life because all living things depend on plants for photosynthesis to
create their own food and grow, so the primary consumers eat the plants and
animals and humans eat them all. Photosynthesis also uses a lot of carbon dioxide
to synthesize and make sugar as it uses a lot of energy.

9. Why eat the predators at the top of the food chain?

Because tertiary consumers consume more energy than they can offer. According
to the 10% rule, only 10% of energy is passed on to the next trophic level, the rest
of energy is used to grow and develop.

10. When is the energy pyramid beneficial?

With the energy pyramid, you can see individual trophic levels and the how
relative amounts of energy is transferred across each trophic level, and according
to the 10% rule, only 10% of energy is passed on to the next trophic level.

11. How do human activities (global warming,

eutrophication,biomagnification,etc affect biodiversity?)
Global warming is caused by carbon cycles. Humans get fossil fuels and use them
for combustion, pumping a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. However, carbon
dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which helps trap the heat in Earth. If there are more
carbon dioxide in the air, less heat would be released, leading to global warming
and temperature rise. Eutrophication is caused by the nitrogen cycle. Nitrogen
fixation bacteria convert nitrate in the atmosphere into ammonia. However
plants can’t use ammonia, so with the help of nitrifying bacteria, it converts
ammonia into nitrates, which then the plants can use for growth by converting it
into amino acids. Plants also fertilizer which contains nitrates however when the
nitrates flow into the river, this causes eutrophication where algal blooms occur
and plants in water unable to do photosynthesis and die due to lack of sunlight ,
fish die due to lack of oxygen.

12. How are limiting factors and carrying capacity related/different?

Limiting factors limit the population from growing further, because there is a
limited amount of resources available. Carrying capacity is the maximum amount
of population that an ecosystem can maintain. If the population is over the
carrying capacity, there would be more competition, disease, and other factors
that decrease the population. Limiting factors

13. Example of density dependent and density independent factors

An example of a density dependent factor is competition that would decline in
population growth. Competition for food
An example of a density independent factor is a natural disaster that would cause
the population to decline. The occurrence of natural disasters is random, because
it could happen regardless of population growth.

14. Why are producers (photosynthesis) important?

Producers help maintain the balance of ecosystems. They produce food and all
the animals depend directly or indirectly on the plants survival.

15. Logistic growth vs exponential growth

Logistic growth is a stable increase in population. It first experiences exponential
growth then levels off because of limiting factors come into place, the resources
start to deplete. However, exponential growth could continuously occur if there is
abundance of resources and no predators, so the animals could reproduce freely
without any limitations.

16. Why greenhouse gases affect the Earth

Ozone helps Earth. Methane, carbon dioxide and water are greenhouse gases that
prevent the sunlight from escaping, if if there is more carbon dioxide then the
greenhouse gas would increase, so the Earth’s temperature would be colder.

17. Why larger mass animals have more energy to burn

This is because the mass of animals are heavier. However, small animals also have
fast metabolism which allows them to burn energy fast to. But, the more mass the
animals have the more energy they burn.