Jugami › Life Science
Middle school · Grades 6–8
Life Science
Everything alive is connected.
A sea otter cracking a sea urchin can decide whether a whole underwater forest survives. A gorilla munching wild plants on a volcano is part of a web of life that stretches from the soil to the clouds.
Life science is how we figure out those connections. This free course is for middle schoolers. Each topic has real field studies, a mini-game, and a quick quiz.
What is life science?
Life science is the study of living things, or organisms: how they are built, how they get energy, how they grow and reproduce, and how they depend on each other.
It covers everything from cells too small to see to whole forests and oceans. Scientists who study it watch carefully, count, compare, and run experiments, then check whether the evidence supports their idea.
You can do the same. A notebook, a pencil, and patience are the first tools of every field biologist.
Topics
The first topic is ready to explore. More are being written now.
- Live
Food Webs and Ecosystems
Producers, consumers, and decomposers; how energy flows; the 10% rule; keystone species; and how sea otters protect kelp forests. Includes a food-web game and a quiz.
- Coming soon
Classifying Living Things
How scientists sort millions of species into groups, and how a dichotomous key helps you name what you find.
- Coming soon
Cells
The building blocks of every organism, from bacteria to blue whales, and the parts that keep a cell alive.
- Coming soon
Heredity and Genetics
Why you look a bit like your relatives: genes, traits, and how they pass from parents to offspring.
- Coming soon
Evolution and Adaptation
How living things change over many generations, and the evidence scientists use to trace those changes.
How do we know?
Field notes
Much of what we know about life comes from people who simply watched, for a very long time. In 1967 the zoologist Dian Fossey founded the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda's Virunga Mountains to study wild mountain gorillas. She watched so patiently that the gorillas got used to her, and she learned their habits, their calls, and how their groups work. Karisoke still studies gorillas today.
Other discoveries come from comparing places. In a 1974 study, ecologists James Estes and John Palmisano compared Aleutian islands in Alaska that had sea otters with an island that did not. Where otters were missing, sea urchins were common and kelp was scarce. Comparing "with" and "without" is one of the strongest tools a field scientist has.
About these lessons
Every topic is written for grades 6–8, with new words explained the first time they appear. Each page ends with its sources, so you can check the facts yourself. The games and quizzes work with a keyboard, a mouse, or a touch screen, and the lesson text is all there even if JavaScript is turned off.
Sources
- Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, The Karisoke Research Center (founded September 24, 1967).
- Britannica Kids, Dian Fossey.
- Estes, J. A., and J. F. Palmisano (1974), Sea otters: their role in structuring nearshore communities, Science 185: 1058–1060 (U.S. Geological Survey record).
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, What makes the sea otter a keystone species? (PDF).
Credits
Jugami Life Science is written by Dian, Jugami's life science teacher, named for the gorilla researcher Dian Fossey. Every illustration on this site is original, hand-coded SVG, and the share images are drawn in code. No photos, no ads, no trackers.