Crosscutting Concepts
"How Scientists and Engineers Think"
Concept 1: PatternsObserved patterns in nature guide organization and classification and prompt questions about relationships and causes underlying them.
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Concept 2: Cause and Effect: Mechanism and PredictionEvents have causes, sometimes simple, sometimes multifaceted. Deciphering causal relationships, and the mechanisms by which they are mediated, is a major activity of science and engineering.
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Concept 3: Scale, Proportion, and QuantityIn considering phenomena, it is critical to recognize what is relevant at different size, time, and energy scales, and to recognize proportional relationships between different quantities as scales change.
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Concept 4: Systems and System Models
A system is an organized group of related objects or components; models can be used for understanding and predicting the behavior of systems.
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Concept 5: Energy and Matter: Flows, Cycles, and Conservation
Tracking energy and matter flows, into, out of, and within systems helps one understand their system’s behavior.
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Concept 6: Structure and Function
The way an object is shaped or structured determines many of its properties and functions.
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