Key Idea: All organisms, including plants and animals, have mechanisms for storing molecules from food for later use.
Students are expected to know that:
- Some of the carbon-containing molecules that become part of an animal’s or plant’s body structures can be used later (as a source of chemical energy or building materials).
- Molecules typically used for storage include fats (in both plants and animals) and some carbohydrates, such as starch (in plants).
- Molecules used for storage are often stored in specialized structures. Specialized structures for food include fat tissue in animals and seeds in plants, both of which store fat molecules; and seeds, bulbs, and some roots in plants, all of which store starch molecules.
Boundaries:
- Items do not assess knowledge of other storage molecules such as triglycerides or glycogen or the chemical or structural formulas of any storage molecules.
| Item ID Number |
Knowledge Being Assessed | Grades 6–8 |
Grades 9–12 |
Select This Item for My Item Bank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
51% |
60% |
|
||
54% |
N/A |
|
||
38% |
45% |
|
||
38% |
34% |
|
Misconception |
Student Misconception |
Grades |
Grades |
|---|---|---|---|
53% |
60% | ||
25% |
28% | ||
Animals cannot store molecules from food in their bodies (AAAS Project 2061, n.d.). | 29% |
20% | |
Molecules from food are not stored in the fat tissue of animals. | 33% |
20% | |
Plants cannot store molecules from food in their body structures (AAAS Project 2061, n.d.). | 27% |
26% |
Frequency of selecting a misconception was calculated by dividing the total number of times a misconception was chosen by the number of times it could have been chosen, averaged over the number of students answering the questions within this particular idea.
Code |
Statement |
|---|---|