Midterm Exam study guide

Instructions

The midterm exam will take place on Monday, October 25.

Bring things to write with and a calculator. (Paul will bring a few calculators to class that you can use.) You may not use your phone or iPad as a calculator for the exam.

When I asked people in past classes to tell me how they prepared for exams, a common technique with those who did the best was studying with someone else.

${}^*$ Preparation quiz on Friday October 22. Study the items that look like this for the preparation quiz. (They will also be on the exam.)

Energy

  • Operational definition of energy
  • Gravitational energy = $mgh$ (in Joules)
  • Chemical energy, can be heat (combustion) or electric energy (battery), usually given in units of Calories / gram (see combustion worksheet).
  • Thermal energy (heat)
  • Elastic energy, Energy of motion, electrical energy
  • Energy and Power: $$\text{Power}=\frac{\text{Energy}}{\text{time}}$$ which also means... $$\text{Power}\times{time}=\text{Energy}$$
  • Metric unit for energy (e.g. GravE=$mgh$) in Joules.
  • Metric unit for power is Watt = 1 Joule / 1 second.
  • How much power humans can typically exert.
  • Which energy sources produce GHG emissions and which don't: nuclear, wind, solar, burning fossil fuels, hydro, burning biomass

Chemistry (Hobson Chapter 2) including

  • Phases of matter (solid, liquid, gas).
  • Reading chemical formulas and chemical equations.
  • Elements in the same column of the periodical table have similar chemical properties,
  • Atomic and molecular weights.
  • Using chemical formulas to figure out weight ratios of chemicals involved.
  • Chemical energy results from rearrangements of bonds in chemical reactions.
  • Results of the combustion worksheet I may ask you on the exam about the prices you researched, but not on the quiz.
  • From Hobson's Conceptual Exercises-Chapter 2 the exercises in "THE GREEK ATOM" and "ATOMS AND MOLECULES" would be helpful to quiz yourself.

Earth's atmosphere

  • The composition of Earth's atmosphere.
  • Which of these are Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) and which are not.
  • The 'natural greenhouse effect'.
  • Water and water vapor
    • Water as a GHG
    • meaning of 100% relative humidity, how water content in the atmosphere changes with temperature
    • History of global warming research: How do we know what we know?
    • Why human emissions of water vapor, which *is* a greenhouse gas, do not contribute to global warming as much as $CO_2$ emissions.
  • Carbon-dioxide
    • Sources of $CO_2$ emissions,
    • Which energy sources emit $CO_2$ and which do not,
    • Which are "fossil fuels" and how did they form?
    • Some ways that $CO_2$ is taken out of the atmosphere,
    • Historical levels of $CO_2$
    • How we measure $CO_2$ currently / in the far distant past.
  • Feedback cycles - a change gets magnified (or diminished).
  • Impacts of climate heating on extreme weather events
    • Hurricanes - What conditions are likely to make hurricanes form? Hazards of hurricanes... How has climate change affected them?
    • High-tide (sunny day) flooding - How has climate change affected sea levels? What other factors affect tides? How you measure sunny day flooding when sea levels are changing all the time?
    • Fire - Causes / conditions that make them more likely.
    • Increased rainfall - Hot air can "hold" more water vapor than cold air

    Climate change

    • Some history (ice ages, Arrhenius).
    • How plants use carbon dioxide.
    • What kinds of different climates has Earth had in the past. Some reasons for those changes,
    • Some consequences of continued warming,
    • The difference between adaptation and mitigation. (Be able to name some examples of each.)
    • The carbon cycle and the water cycle.
    • Changes because of humans to the carbon cycle.
    • Major sources and sinks (see the updated updated Project Drawdown notes) of atmospheric carbon.
    • GWP (and GWP$_{100}) of different gases. Which are higher / lower?
    • Radiative forcing as a way of comparing anything that causes our atmosphere to heat up or cool down.

    Readings

    • "Climate of Man" article - changes in the Arctic.
    • Germany's Energiewende.

    Conversion factors and equations:

    • Be able to estimate the sizes of some common things (E.g. humans, mice, Goshen College building, distance from Goshen College to downtown Goshen) in meters, centimeters, or kilometers.
    • Converting units: I will supply you with conversion factors between any non-metric units needed. For example, cm to inches, pounds to kg, kilometers to miles.
    • However, you should know (memorize) the conversion factors between metric units, which depend on the metric prefixes: Since kilo- means 1,000, you should know that 1 kilometer =1000 meters and 1 kilogram = 1000 grams. Other metric prefixes:
      • milli-=1/1,000=$10^{-3}$
      • micro- =1/1,000,000=$10^{-6}$
      • centi- = 1/100
      • nano- = $10^{-9}$
      • kilo- = 1,000=$10^3$
      • mega- = 1,000,000=$10^6$
      • giga- = 1 billion = $10^9$.
      • I will give you any formulas you need. These will include at least:
      • Gravitational energy = $mgh$
      • Weight (in Newtons) = $mg$ (when $m$ is in kilograms).
      • The gravitational constant $g=$9.8 m/sec^2