Directions: Use the information provided and your knowledge of Physical Science to answer the following questions. Show all work where necessary.
Directions: Use the information provided and your knowledge of Physical Science to answer the following questions. Show all work where necessary.
Students observe a hawk soaring high above a field. It dives, catches a mouse, and flies away using powerful wingbeats. Earlier, students noticed the mouse nibbling on seeds from nearby plants.
Students ask:
How can the hawk get energy for flying from seeds it never ate?
This investigation helps students see that energy flows from the Sun to plants to plant-eating animals to predators.
Animals need energy for movement, body warmth, growth, and repairing their bodies. Predators, like hawks, get this energy by eating other animals. But the mouse the hawk eats does not create energy by itself. The mouse gets its energy from food, such as seeds. Seeds come from plants, and plants get their energy from the Sun through photosynthesis. This means the energy in the hawk's body can be traced all the way back to sunlight.
A hawk uses a lot of energy to flap its wings, soar, hunt, and stay warm in cooler air high above the ground. Scientists can measure how much energy a hawk gets by looking at the energy stored in the mouse and how much of that energy the hawk uses during flight.
Even though the hawk never ate the seeds, the energy inside the mouse came from the plants, which got their energy from the Sun. This shows that all animals, even predators at the top of the food chain, depend on the Sun's energy.
Source: https://www.slideserve.com/tana/ecosystems-and-energy
Amount of Seeds Eaten (g) | Energy in Seeds (kJ) |
|---|---|
5 | 80 |
8 | 128 |
10 | 160 |
Body System Supported | Energy Hawk Uses (kJ) |
|---|---|
Flight Muscles | 90 |
Body Warmth | 50 |
Growth/Repair | 20 |
Where did the energy stored in the seeds originally come from?
Look at Table 1.
How does the energy in seeds change as the amount of seeds eaten increases?
Using Figure 1, describe the pattern you observe between grams of seeds eaten and energy stored (kJ).
Which body system uses the most energy in the hawk?
Look at Table 2 and Figure 2. How is the energy the hawk uses distributed among different body systems?
How does the hawk-mouse-seed investigation show that the energy animals use originally came from the Sun?
Answer using Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning.