This article was originally published on LinkedIn, April 26, 2025: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/two-words-tom-regan-7rffe
My previous article dealt with a fairly big topic—how standards documents should be expressed. Now, I’d like to shift gears and focus on two specific details within the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).[i] These are two words that I would change if I had the opportunity.
Before I reveal the words, I want to discuss the significance of this exercise. Correcting scientific inaccuracies requires no justification. Beyond that, this exercise helps us think about the next set of standards. Those standards will be somewhere on the continuum from minor revisions of the NGSS to something completely different. Changing a word here and there exemplifies the minor revisions end of the continuum—revisions that could be made without changing the structure or intent of the NGSS in the slightest. With that context, we can turn to the words.
The first word is “meteor”. It’s found in the clarification statement for MS-PS2-1:
“Examples of practical problems could include the impact of collisions…between a meteor and a space vehicle.”
Assuming we’re talking about an object hitting an orbiting spacecraft, the appropriate term is meteoroid. A meteoroid is a rocky or metallic object in outer space, from about 30 micrometers to 1 meter in size.[ii] Smaller objects are micrometeoroids and larger objects are asteroids.
A meteor is the bright streak that a meteoroid creates as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere. And, for completeness, if the meteoroid survives passage through the atmosphere and lands on Earth’s surface, it is a meteorite.
The second word is “can”. NGSS Performance Expectation HS-PS2-5 reads:
“Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that an electric current can produce a magnetic field and a changing magnetic field can produce an electric current.”
The first statement is that an electric current can produce a magnetic field. This statement is not quite right, because the word “can” implies that sometimes an electric current does not produce a magnetic field. This is not the case; an electric current always produces a magnetic field. Appropriate wording is “an electric current produces a magnetic field.”
The second statement is that a changing magnetic field can produce an electric current. A changing magnetic field always creates an electric field. However, does that electric field always create an electric current? No! There must be a conductor (for example, a wire) in the vicinity to carry the current. No conductor, no current. The word “can” in the second statement is appropriate.
Do you know of any details like these—easy revisions that would have a negligible effect on the NGSS?
[i] NGSS Lead States. 2013. Next Generation Science Standards: For States, By States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://www.nextgenscience.org/
[ii] https://www.imo.net/definitions-of-terms-in-meteor-astronomy-iau/