🔬 8th grade Science: how to help at home

What each unit covers

1. 🧪Mixtures & Solutions

   Telling pure substances from mixtures, mechanical mixtures from solutions, solutes and solvents, comparing concentration, and choosing separation methods like filtering, evaporation, magnets and distillation.

2. 🛟Density & Buoyancy

   Calculating density from mass and volume, explaining why solids, liquids and gases differ in density using the particle theory, and predicting whether objects float or sink in different fluids.

3. ⚛️Particles & Matter

   How the movement of particles explains solids, liquids and gases and changes of state, the parts of an atom (including the quarks inside protons and neutrons, and electrons as leptons), elements and compounds, and telling physical from chemical changes.

4. ⚛️Atoms & Elements

   Elements versus compounds and mixtures, chemical symbols (H, O, Na, Cl, Fe, Au…), counting atoms in formulas like H₂O and C₆H₁₂O₆, metals and non-metals, and the basics of the periodic table.

5. 🧪The Periodic Table

   Groups and periods, metals, non-metals and metalloids, alkali metals, halogens and noble gases, and how valence electrons and shells explain the patterns.

6. ⚗️Chemical Reactions

   Practices signs of chemical reactions, how properties change when new substances form, conservation of mass, and devices that release or absorb thermal energy through reactions.

7. ⚗️Chemical Change

   Telling a chemical change from a physical change, reading simple word and symbol equations, why mass is conserved, what speeds a reaction up, exothermic and endothermic changes, and GHS safety.

8. 🏃Speed, Velocity & Motion Graphs

   Practices calculating average speed from distance and time, telling speed from velocity (which includes direction) and distance from displacement, and reading distance-time graphs.

9. 🏎️Motion, Forces & Newton’s Laws

   Practices speed, velocity, acceleration, forces, friction, gravity and Newton's three Laws of Motion, with stability. It follows the Grade 8 science skill descriptors on motion and stability and the Laws of Motion in the New Brunswick curriculum.

10. 🚀Newton's Laws

    Inertia (1st law), force = mass × acceleration (2nd law) and action–reaction pairs (3rd law), with everyday examples and a few simple calculations.

11. 🧲Fields & Forces at a Distance

    Practices forces that act without touching: what affects electric and magnetic force strength, why gravity is always attractive and depends on mass, and how fields store energy.

12. 🎢Kinetic & Potential Energy

    Practices how kinetic energy depends on mass and speed, how potential energy changes with position, and how energy transfers change an object's motion.

13. ⚡Work, Energy & Efficiency

    Using the scientific terms force, displacement, work, energy and efficiency, calculating work as force times displacement, finding efficiency, and how friction and design affect the energy lost from machines.

14. 💡Circuits & Static

    Complete circuits, series versus parallel wiring, conductors and insulators, adding cell voltages, and static electricity (like and opposite charges, lightning).

15. 🌈Light & Radiation

    Wavelength and frequency, the electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves to gamma rays and what each is used for, reflection, refraction and color, and staying safe from UV radiation.

16. 🌊Energy Transfers & Waves

    Practices how energy is conserved as it is transferred and transformed in systems such as circuits, food webs, roller coasters and photosynthesis, and how transverse and longitudinal waves carry energy.