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Course: Big History Project > Unit 5

Lesson 1: What Is Life? |5.0
Arts and humanities
Big History Project
Life
What Is Life? |5.0
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ACTIVITY: Vocab Tracking

Google Classroom

Purpose

This repeated activity should help you become familiar with a process for understanding unfamiliar words anytime you encounter them in the course. Recording the words and looking up the definitions will help develop and increase your vocabulary both for this course and for standardized testing.

Process

Take out your Vocab Tracker and be sure to record new and unfamiliar words on it. Remember you can use this tracker for both BHP-specific vocabulary as well as for any words you come across in the course that you have trouble understanding.

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  • blobby green style avatar for user rounklo
    Posted 4 years ago. Direct link to rounklo's post “How did Charles Darwin's ...”
    How did Charles Darwin's Theory of evolution forever change the science of Biology.
    (3 votes)
    Default Khan Academy avatar avatar for user
    • aqualine tree style avatar for user Prisha B
      Posted 4 years ago. Direct link to Prisha B's post “The theory of evolution p...”
      The theory of evolution provided an explanation for how we humans and all the other species came about, and how we can be related to each other even though we are all so different. For example, how in the world do the cells of multicellular and unicellular organisms have similarities such as cytoplasm, DNA, and the like? The theory of evolution explains that at some time in the far distant past, there was a first type of life form which all other life forms have as a common ancestor. It's like how every single person on Earth is related to the very first Homo sapien even though we are all so very different. Mutations caused these differences, and natural selection made it so that the organisms with the most advantage (which a mutation may or may not give) were the ones that survived to reproduce, passing their traits to the next generation.

      As a side note, the Theory of Evolution also was a heavy blow to religion, which doesn't appreciate that humans were created merely from chance and mutations over billions of years.

      Hope this helps.
      (2 votes)