Module 1: Fundamentals of Biology

You may already know that biology is the study of life, and you will study biology throughout this course. However, before you dive further into biology concepts, you must understand some science fundamentals. In this module, you will explore the nature of science and scientific investigation. In addition, you will learn about the collaborative process that scientists perform when investigating natural phenomena. That includes knowing the differences between a hypothesis, a theory, and a law. You will also examine the common units of measure and how data is organized into tables and graphs. Finally, you will learn about the importance of safety in the lab during scientific investigations.

Getting Started

Before you learn about biology and some fundamental areas of biology study, see if you can identify whether a concept is “Biology” or “Not Biology” in this non-graded activity. Read each concept as it appears and then drag and drop it into the correct column. Click the player button to get started.

 

Key Vocabulary

To view the definitions for these key vocabulary terms, visit the course glossary.

analyze	International System of Units (SI)	pie graph
bar graph	law	qualitative data
biology	line graph	quantitative data
data	observation	table
hypothesis	peer review	theory
inference