Apr 19 2011
Since it was such a busy week with prom and since most of you met your scribe post obligations during the energy project, I did not assign scribes over the last few days. So, here is a collection of links from last year’s class on Global Climate Change for those that missed class: Intro to [...]
Apr 19 2011
*Since did not have a scribe for ozone day, I pulled this post by alum Kelly Cox ’10 out of the archives. Today during the second half of class, we discussed ozone, or O3. The first thing to recognize when discussing ozone is that there is good ozone, and there is bad ozone. You MUST [...]
Apr 15 2011
On Monday, we learned primarily about smog, or “smoky fog”, which is the dark, sooty pollution one can typically see over heavily populated industrial areas such as Pittsburgh or Mexico City. There are two main types of smog: “grey” smog and “brown” smog, which are obviously named as such due to their color. Grey smog, [...]
Apr 10 2011
We had a few folks out visiting schools Friday, so here is the scoop. After reviewing the energy unit tests, I briefly reviewed the structure and composition of the atmosphere. Then, I did a brief into to tropospheric air pollution. The Clean Air Act (originally enacted in 1970) has been one of our most successful [...]
Nov 14 2010
This last chapter, we really started to get an idea of how biogeochemical cycles work and can “malfunction.” Here are a few interesting current events on the topic if you want to learn more: Nitrogen Cycle: Whales Help Fertilize Ocean With Floating Dung http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130437080 Phosphorus Cycle: Manure, Fertilizer Part Of Chesapeake’s Problem http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121565792 Carbon Cycle: [...]
Oct 19 2010
On Friday we continued our discussion on the Earth’s Atmosphere and why we have a diversity of climates throughout the Earth. 1. UNEVEN HEATING OF THE EARTH – Shape – Tilt (23.5 degrees from the vertical axis) – Orbit We did a quick experiment with the globe to show how the shape and tilt affect [...]
Oct 16 2010
What’s Really in our Atmosphere? In order to understand biomes, we have to understand why temperature and precipitation change in different places around the world. To start the understanding of this we talked about the composition and structure of the Earth’s atmosphere. I: Composition- 78% Nitrogen- stable, inert gas because of the triple bond between [...]
