Science Word Search Printable, From Lab Tools to Famous Scientists

Print a science word search and answer key, from the scientific method to 23 famous scientists, as words or clues.

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Science Word Search

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 16 words found

ECRHVIEMMNHTSVA

EATIABEMOMATTER

DOQARPYPLSBMLEH

ESTBIIGWEHIAJVT

NTACAFRGCCTXEIB

SCTUBPAGUPAWLDR

INNWLEVDLNTRNEO

TEXPERIMENTRMNN

YXRUBDTAMOPOICL

TTULITYSABWFKEM

AHACONCLUSIONUH

TECTLADWMEASURE

COKFORCEORGSSDS

NRNOGIMNSVFIXEP

BYEIYBEAKERLRRP

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

ExperimentEXPERIMENT
VariableVARIABLE
ConclusionCONCLUSION
EvidenceEVIDENCE
TheoryTHEORY
ObserveOBSERVE
MeasureMEASURE
BeakerBEAKER
DensityDENSITY
BiologyBIOLOGY
ForceFORCE
MatterMATTER
GravityGRAVITY
HabitatHABITAT
FossilFOSSIL
MoleculeMOLECULE

16 of 24 words from the Science Key Terms list.

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Answer key: Science Word Search

ECRHVIEMMNHTSVA

EATIABEMOMATTER

DOQARPYPLSBMLEH

ESTBIIGWEHIAJVT

NTACAFRGCCTXEIB

SCTUBPAGUPAWLDR

INNWLEVDLNTRNEO

TEXPERIMENTRMNN

YXRUBDTAMOPOICL

TTULITYSABWFKEM

AHACONCLUSIONUH

TECTLADWMEASURE

COKFORCEORGSSDS

NRNOGIMNSVFIXEP

BYEIYBEAKERLRRP

EXPERIMENT, VARIABLE, CONCLUSION, EVIDENCE, THEORY, OBSERVE, MEASURE, BEAKER, DENSITY, BIOLOGY, FORCE, MATTER, GRAVITY, HABITAT, FOSSIL, MOLECULE

Next step Build a puzzle from this week's science vocabulary Print bingo cards from the same science terms

All 190 words

Scientific Method 23

Analysis Studying your numbers closely to find a pattern in them.
Conclusion The last step: saying whether the results support the idea you tested.
Constant Something kept the same in every trial so the test stays fair.
Control The group in a test that gets no change, kept so there is something to compare with.
Data Measurements and notes collected during a test.
Evidence Facts and measurements that support an idea or count against it.
Experiment A planned test that changes one thing to see what happens.
Hypothesis An idea you can test, often written as: If this, then that, because...
Inference A reasoned idea about what you did not see, based on what you did see.
Law A statement of what always happens in nature under the same conditions.
Materials The list of everything you need to gather before the test begins.
Model A drawing, object or program that stands in for the real thing.
Observation Something you notice with your senses or a tool and then write down.
Peer review Other experts checking a study before a journal prints it.
Prediction A statement, made before the test, of what you expect to happen.

Show all 190 words (175 more)

Scientific Method, continued

Procedure The numbered steps of a test, written so that someone else can follow them.
Question What every investigation starts with: something you want to find out.
Repeat To run the whole test again and see whether the result comes out the same.
Research Reading what is already known about a topic before you run your own test.
Results What the test showed, often set out in a table or a graph.
Theory A well-tested explanation of why something in nature happens.
Trial One run of a test. Running several makes the result more reliable.
Variable Anything in a test that can change, such as light, water or time.

Science Skills 23

Analyze To break information into parts and look for what it tells you.
Build To put parts together to make a working model.
Calculate To work out an answer with numbers, such as speed from distance and time.
Classify To put things into groups by the features they share.
Collect To gather samples or numbers during a study.
Communicate To share what you found by talking, writing or drawing.
Compare To look at two things and say how they are alike and how they differ.
Describe To tell what something looks, feels, sounds or smells like.
Design To plan how something will be made or how a test will run.
Discover To find or learn something that nobody knew before.
Explain To tell why something happened, using your evidence.
Explore To look around a new place or topic to see what is there.
Identify To work out exactly what something is, often with a field guide.
Improve To change a design so that it works better the next time.
Infer To work out something you cannot see from the clues you can see.
Investigate To look for an answer by planning and carrying out a study.
Measure To find the size or amount of something with a tool and a unit.
Observe To watch closely and use your senses to gather facts.
Predict To say what you think will happen, using what you already know.
Record To write down or draw what you see so it is not forgotten.
Sketch To make a quick drawing of what you see, with labels.
Sort To put objects into sets, such as things that float and things that sink.
Test To try an idea out and watch what happens.

Lab Tools 26

Balance The tool that finds the mass of an object.
Barometer It measures air pressure, which helps to forecast the weather.
Beaker A wide glass cup with a pouring lip, used for mixing and warming liquids.
Binoculars Two small telescopes side by side, one for each eye.
Bunsen burner A gas burner with one open flame, named after a German chemist.
Compass Its magnetic needle points north, so you can tell direction.
Dropper A small tube with a rubber bulb that adds liquid one drop at a time.
Filter It lets a liquid pass through while it holds back the solid bits.
Flask A glass container with a narrow neck, easy to swirl without spilling.
Funnel A cone with a tube at the bottom, for pouring into a narrow opening.
Goggles Eye protection that seals against the face to keep splashes out.
Hand lens A magnifying glass held close to the eye for looking at small details.
Hot plate A flat electric heater that warms a beaker without a flame.
Microscope It uses lenses to make tiny things, such as cells, look much larger.
Petri dish A shallow round dish with a lid, used for growing bacteria and molds.
Pipette A thin tube that moves a measured amount of liquid from place to place.
Prism A block of glass that splits white light into the colors of the rainbow.
Ruler A flat strip marked in centimeters, for measuring short lengths and drawing straight lines.
Slide The small flat piece of glass that holds a sample under a microscope.
Spring scale A hook on a spring that shows how strong a pull is.
Stopwatch A hand-held clock that you start and stop to time an event.
Telescope A tool with lenses or mirrors that makes far-off objects look nearer.
Test tube A thin glass tube, closed at one end, that holds a small sample.
Thermometer The tool that shows how hot or cold something is.
Tongs A gripping tool for picking up hot objects safely.
Tweezers A small pinching tool for picking up tiny objects.

Measuring and Units 21

Accuracy How close a measurement is to the true value.
Celsius The temperature scale on which water freezes at 0 degrees and boils at 100.
Decibel The unit used to say how loud a sound is.
Density How much mass is packed into each bit of space. It decides what floats.
Gram A small measure of mass: about what one cubic centimeter of water has.
Hertz The unit of frequency: how many waves or swings happen each second.
Joule The unit of energy, named after an English physicist.
Kelvin The temperature scale that starts at absolute zero, the coldest anything can be.
Liter A measure of volume equal to 1,000 cubic centimeters.
Mass The amount of matter in an object, measured in grams or kilograms.
Meniscus The curved top of a liquid in a narrow tube, where you read the level.
Meter The base metric measure of length, a little longer than a yard.
Metric The system of measures built on tens that scientists everywhere share.
Precision How close repeated measurements are to one another.
Speed Distance traveled divided by the time taken.
Temperature How hot or cold something is.
Unit A fixed amount used for measuring, such as one second or one centimeter.
Volt The unit that tells how hard a battery pushes electric charge around a circuit.
Volume The space something takes up, measured in liters or cubic centimeters.
Watt The unit of power printed on light bulbs: one joule of energy each second.
Weight The pull of gravity on an object. Yours would be less on the Moon.

Branches of Science 23

Acoustics The part of physics that deals with sound.
Anatomy The study of the parts of a body and how they fit together.
Astronomy The study of stars, planets and everything beyond Earth's air.
Biology The study of living things.
Botany The study of plants.
Chemistry The study of what substances are made of and how they change.
Ecology The study of how living things depend on each other and their surroundings.
Engineering Using science and math to design things that solve problems.
Entomology The study of insects.
Genetics The study of how traits pass from parents to their young.
Geology The study of rocks and of how the solid Earth formed and changes.
Herpetology The study of reptiles and amphibians.
Medicine The science of keeping people healthy and treating illness.
Meteorology The study of the atmosphere and the weather.
Mycology The study of fungi, such as mushrooms, molds and yeasts.
Oceanography The study of the seas: their water, floor, currents and life.
Optics The part of physics that deals with light and how lenses bend it.
Ornithology The study of birds.
Paleontology The study of ancient life through fossils.
Physics The study of matter, energy, forces and motion.
Seismology The study of earthquakes and the waves they send through the ground.
Volcanology The study of volcanoes, lava and magma.
Zoology The study of animals.

Famous Scientists 23

Anning She dug fossils of sea reptiles from the cliffs at Lyme Regis in England.
Archimedes Ancient Greek of Syracuse who explained why things float and how levers work.
Banneker Largely self-taught American astronomer whose almanacs of the 1790s predicted eclipses.
Carver American scientist who urged farmers to rotate cotton with peanuts and sweet potatoes.
Copernicus Astronomer born in Poland whose 1543 book put the Sun, not Earth, at the center.
Curie Born in Poland, she won Nobel Prizes in both physics and chemistry.
Darwin He sailed on the Beagle and explained evolution by natural selection in 1859.
Einstein The physicist of relativity, who in 1905 wrote the equation E = mc squared.
Faraday English scientist who showed in 1831 that a changing magnetic field makes a current.
Fleming Scottish scientist who discovered penicillin in 1928.
Franklin American who proposed in 1752 flying a kite near storm clouds to show that lightning is electric.
Galileo Italian astronomer who in 1610 turned a telescope on Jupiter and found its four largest moons.
Halley English astronomer who predicted that the comet of 1682 would return in 1758. It did.
Hooke He named the cell in 1665 after looking at cork through a microscope.
Hubble American astronomer who proved in 1924 that other galaxies lie far beyond the Milky Way.
Jenner English doctor who in 1796 tested the first vaccine, which protected against smallpox.
Kepler German astronomer who found that planets travel in ellipses, not circles.
Leeuwenhoek Dutchman who made his own single-lens microscopes and was the first to observe microbes.
Linnaeus Swedish biologist who set up the two-part Latin names still used for living things.
Mendel A friar who bred pea plants and worked out the rules of heredity.
Newton English scientist whose 1687 book set out the laws of motion and of gravity.
Pasteur French chemist who showed that microbes spoil milk and wine. Heating to stop them bears his name.
Volta Italian physicist credited with inventing the electric battery. A unit of electricity honors him.

Elementary Science 26

Circuit The closed loop that electricity needs before a bulb will glow.
Energy The ability to make things move, heat up or light up.
Erosion Wind, water or ice carrying away bits of rock and earth.
Food chain The order of who eats whom, starting with a green plant.
Force A push or a pull.
Fossil The remains or the print of a living thing from long ago, kept in rock.
Gas The state that spreads out to fill any space, like the air in a balloon.
Gravity The pull that brings a dropped ball to the ground and holds the Moon in orbit.
Habitat The place where a plant or an animal naturally lives.
Heat Energy that flows from a warmer thing to a cooler one.
Life cycle The stages a living thing passes through, such as egg, tadpole, frog.
Light Energy you can see. It travels in straight lines and bounces off mirrors.
Liquid The state that flows and takes the shape of its container, like milk.
Magnet It pulls on iron and has a north pole and a south pole.
Mammal A warm-blooded animal with hair or fur that feeds its young on milk.
Matter Anything that has mass and takes up space.
Motion A change in position: what a rolling ball has and a parked car lacks.
Orbit The curved path of a moon or a satellite around a larger body.
Planet A large round body that travels around a star. Eight of them circle the Sun.
Predator An animal that hunts other animals for food.
Prey An animal that is hunted and eaten by another.
Season Spring, summer, fall or winter. They happen because Earth is tilted.
Soil The top layer of the ground: bits of rock mixed with rotted plants, air and water.
Solid The state that keeps its own shape, like ice or a brick.
Sound Energy you can hear, made when something vibrates.
Weather What the air outside is doing today: sunny, rainy, windy or snowy.

Middle School Science 25

Acceleration How quickly something speeds up, slows down or changes direction.
Atmosphere The blanket of gases around a planet.
Atom The smallest bit of an element. Everything you can touch is built from them.
Cell The smallest living unit. Your body is built from trillions of them.
Climate The usual weather of a place, averaged over many years.
Compound A substance made of two or more elements joined chemically, such as table salt.
Convection Heat carried by a moving liquid or gas, as when warm air rises.
Eclipse When the Moon blocks the Sun, or Earth's shadow covers the Moon.
Ecosystem All the living things in a place together with the water, soil and air they use.
Element A pure substance made of one kind of atom, such as gold or oxygen.
Evolution The slow change of living things over many generations.
Friction The force that slows things down when two surfaces rub together.
Galaxy A huge system of stars, gas and dust held together by gravity.
Heredity The passing of traits from parents to their young.
Inertia The way an object keeps doing what it is doing until a force acts on it.
Mixture Substances stirred together but not joined, so they can be separated again.
Molecule Two or more atoms joined together, such as the H2O of water.
Nucleus The control center of a cell, and also the name for the core of an atom.
Organism Any single living thing, from a bacterium to a blue whale.
Photosynthesis How green plants make sugar from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.
Reaction A change that turns substances into new ones, as when iron rusts.
Solution A mixture in which one substance dissolves evenly in another, like sugar in tea.
Species A group of living things that can breed together and have fertile young.
Velocity Speed together with a direction, such as 20 meters a second north.
Wavelength The distance from one crest of a wave to the next.

How this list was compiled: 190 general science words chosen and defined for this site, in eight themed lists plus a key terms list, an easy list and a hard list. The elementary and middle school lists each mix physical science, life science and Earth and space science, the three content areas named in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Science_Standards. Unit vocabulary (cell parts, the periodic table, rocks, space, weather) is left to the science unit word searches. Every entry except the surnames was checked in the American Heritage Dictionary, https://www.ahdictionary.com/, on 2026-09-19. The 23 people in the Famous Scientists list all died in 1955 or earlier; the date and the discovery in each clue were checked the same day in that person's own English Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/. No brand, company, product or fictional character is included. Spellings are American. Definitions are our own wording in pupil language. Licence: own work

How it works

This science word search printable loads with a puzzle already made from Science Key Terms, 24 words from Hypothesis to Organism. Ten more lists make science word puzzles from the scientific method, lab tools, units, branches and famous scientists: 190 words in all.

Read the full guide

Science word search puzzles printable by topic

Under the puzzle, Scientific Method holds 23 words, from Question to Peer review, and Lab Tools 26. For a science word search for kids in grades 1 and 2, pick Easy Science: 34 words of 3 to 5 letters, such as Gas and Heat. To make the science word search hard, pick Hard Science and press Hard.

Save a science word search printable PDF

Hard Science has 41 words and a puzzle holds 20 at most, so every New puzzle draws a different set: science word searches printable as a class set, each ending with its own answer key. Pick Save as PDF in the print window for science word search puzzles PDF files.

Pick Famous Scientists and tick Show clues, not words: "He named the cell in 1665 after looking at cork through a microscope" hides Hooke.
Nine two-word entries drop the space in the grid: Petri dish becomes PETRIDISH. Photosynthesis, 14 letters, needs a 14 by 14 grid or larger, and the grid grows to fit it.
After Lab Tools, print the lab safety word search. For more science puzzles, try the science crossword puzzles.

Questions and answers

Which science lists fit elementary and middle school?

Elementary Science has 26 words, from Energy to Erosion. Middle School Science has 25, such as Molecule, Heredity, Inertia and Eclipse. Both make science word find puzzles printable at three levels: Easy runs across and down, Medium adds diagonals, Hard adds backwards words.

Which famous scientists are on the list?

Twenty-three surnames, from Archimedes and Copernicus to Curie, Carver and Hubble. Twelve clues carry a year: Halley "predicted that the comet of 1682 would return in 1758. It did." Anning "dug fossils of sea reptiles from the cliffs at Lyme Regis in England."

Can pupils do the science word search PDF at home?

Yes. Press Print or save as PDF and post the saved file. Its last page is the answer key, so leave that page out for pupils.

How were the worksheet's words and clue facts checked?

Every spelling except the surnames was looked up in the American Heritage Dictionary in September 2026. Dated facts, such as Newton's book of 1687 and Jenner's vaccine test of 1796, were read in each person's Wikipedia article the same day.

All 190 words

Scientific Method 23

Scientific Method, continued

Science Skills 23

Lab Tools 26

Measuring and Units 21

Branches of Science 23

Famous Scientists 23

Elementary Science 26

Middle School Science 25

How it works

Science word search puzzles printable by topic

Save a science word search printable PDF

Questions and answers

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