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Inventing Progress: unit vocabulary

Unit vocabulary for 5th grade reading comprehension and vocabulary unit on the topic of collaboration and competition in inventions.
This is a list of a few useful or interesting words you'll find in this unit. You probably know some of them already, while others might be new to you. Take some time to get to know them all before you get started!
Word: apparent
(adjective)
  • Definition: clear; easy to understand
  • Sample Sentence: It quickly became apparent to Jayden that he was going to have to outsmart his competitors if he wanted to make the best robot.
Word: capacity
(noun)
  • Definition 1: the largest amount of something that a person can do or make
  • Sample Sentence: When a company comes up with a new product, they have to figure out whether they have the capacity to actually build it themselves.
  • Definition 2: the largest amount of something that a container can hold
  • Sample Sentence: R2-D2 and BB-8 really wanted to get down at the robot dance party, but the droid disco was already filled to capacity.
Word: concept
(noun)
  • Definition: an idea about what something is and how it will work
  • Sample Sentence: Xavier and Yesme worked together to develop the concept for the new gaming console they hoped to make.
Word: consumer
(noun)
  • Definition: a person who uses or buys something
  • Sample Sentence: Eduarda’s new cookie-rating app was a big hit with consumers: she was getting hundreds of thousands of downloads a day!
Word: ensure
(verb)
  • Definition: to make something certain
  • Sample Sentence: The STEM fair judge asked if we had ensured that our ride met all safety guidelines.
Word: feasible
(adjective)
  • Definition: possible to do or achieve
  • Sample Sentence: Reluctantly, Kemar admitted that while his pizza chef robots were great at adding sauce, cheese, and toppings, it wasn’t going to be feasible to program them to toss the pizzas in the air.
Word: ingenuity
(noun)
  • Definition: being inventive, clever, and/or resourceful
  • Sample Sentence: In 2014, Neeti Kailas’s ingenuity was rewarded when she received the Rolex Award for Enterprise for creating a special medical device that helps doctors detect newborn hearing problems.
Word: innovate
(verb)
  • Definition: come up with a new idea, design, or way of doing something
  • Sample Sentence: Sunisa was constantly innovating—it seemed like she came up with a new hoverboard design every week.
Phrase: market research
(noun)
  • Definition: research to learn what people need or want to buy
  • Sentence: “Did you do any market research to see if anyone would actually buy a camel-calling device?” Mr. Roderick asked the inventor.
Word: novel
(adjective)
  • Definition: new
  • Sample Sentence: Although the design for my new hamster treat dispenser wasn’t complicated, it was novel and sold out quickly online.
Word: patent
(noun)
  • Definition: an official paper that gives a person (or company) the right to be the only one who makes or sells an invention during a specific time frame
  • Sample Sentence: I filed for a patent so that my design for a self-cleaning car couldn’t be stolen by someone else.
Word: posterity
(noun)
  • Definition: people in the future
  • Sample Sentence: Posterity will remember my name forever as the inventor of the first-ever self-frosting cake.
Word: product
(noun)
  • Definition: something that’s made to be sold
  • Sample Sentence: My mom was racing to get her new product, a tool that helps farmers measure soil moisture levels, on the market.
Word: profit
(noun)
  • Definition: making money by selling something for more than it cost you to buy or create it.
  • Sample Sentence: It costs us $25 to build each one of our Incredible Donut Cloning Machines—if we can sell them for $100, that’s a cool $75 profit per machine.
Word: prototype
(noun)
  • Definition: an early model or sample of a machine or creation.
  • Sample Sentence: Ngozi took a deep breath: it was finally time to demonstrate the first working prototype of her new solar-powered jet pack.

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