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To achieve these goals, each student must have:
Biology
Biology provides a review and extension of the biological principles, including the themes of biology, the chemistry of living cells, and biochemistry — the molecules of life and the structures of the cell as revealed by the electron microscope (homeostasis and transport).
The course also covers genetics and its fundamentals: Mendel's experiments, their results and conclusions, the two laws of genetics, and the nucleic acids — their function, their structure, and the part they play in building the proteins of the cell. Finally, students study plant structure, function, and reproduction.
Chemistry
Chemistry provides the basis for students to address consumer, health, safety, environmental, technological, societal, and scientific issues on a daily basis. Its content defines the fundamental knowledge and skills students need to understand the most basic concepts of chemistry associated with the structure, form, change, availability, and use of matter and energy.
The standards are appropriate for high school students and make up the basic content of any first-year chemistry course. Emphasis is placed on the physical science domain, while many connections are drawn to the Earth and space sciences and to the life sciences.
The course is laboratory-based and encourages critical thinking and the use of basic chemical concepts and scientific strategies as students learn to make intelligent decisions and solve practical problems. Technology plays an important role: it is used to measure, probe, and analyse matter and energy. Chemistry-related technology includes probeware and devices such as spectroscopes that can be interfaced with computer- or calculator-based programs so that data may be acquired directly during investigations, both within and beyond the school laboratory.
Students also place the theories and discoveries of significant scientists in their historical perspective. They are expected to use clear and accurate language, keep accurate records, prepare reports, present projects orally and in writing, and take part in discussions of the results and conclusions of scientific investigations.
Environmental Science
Environmental science reviews earlier learning and extends it to many types of pollution: air pollution, acid precipitation, the atmosphere and climate change, the importance of the ozone shield, how we use land, urban land use, food and agriculture, feeding the world, crops and soil, mining and mineral resources, and mineral exploration and mining.
Students also distinguish between non-renewable energy — including energy resources and fossil fuels — and renewable and alternative energy, and finally learn to define solid waste and hazardous waste.
Physics
Most of the phenomena in the world around you are, at the fundamental level, based on physics, and much of physics is based on mechanics. Mechanics begins by quantifying motion and then explains it in terms of forces, energy, and momentum, allowing us to analyse the workings of many familiar phenomena around us — as well as the mechanics of planets, stars, and galaxies.
This on-demand course is recommended for senior high school students. It offers a range of interesting practice problems and experiments carried out at school and at home using simple, everyday materials. Prerequisite courses include Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, and Trigonometry. By studying mechanics, students gain a deeper understanding of the wonders of everyday life, of technology, and of the universe at large.
Geometry
Students study geometry as a mathematical system, exploring circles, chords, secants, and tangent segments, finding area and perimeter, and working with coordinate geometry.