Energy is the ability to matter into motion. It is what makes the universe and everything in it dynamic and ever changing. The flow of energy from the abiotic world to the biotic world and from organism to organism helps determine how living things interact within their environments. Living things need energy for maintenance, growth, and reproduction. In the physical world, energy takes a variety of forms, including wave energy, sound energy, and light energy. The study of dynamic systems in any field of science requires an understanding of energy - its origins, how it flows through systems, how it is converted from one form to another, and how it is conserved. Energy provides the basis for all interactions, whether chemical, biological, or physical. Energy thematically connects all disciplines, and its use and misuse by humans is especially highlighted in the study of environmental science.
Find an article from one of the sites listed below that relates to the topic of energy and how it can fit into environmental science according to the information above. I have highlighted a few phrases above that can help you get started if you're struggling to find the right place to begin. Your post should be no less than 150 words (the size of the paragraph above) and include a topic sentence that states the purpose of your post along with examples. You might type your post in Microsoft Word to help with your word count. Be sure to proof read your post before submitting it to correct any errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Remember you are high school students, some about to graduate, and your post should reflect the education level of such students, not 4th graders.
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Tiny Trout River, Newfoundland, has recently encountered a huge problem. A dead, rotting blue whale that currently has tourism at a high will soon become exactly the opposite. This 81-foot-long monster washed up on the shores of town of 600 about a week ago. The whale is gradually expanding from all of the gas that is building up inside of it. They are having a hard time keeping people away because its not very often that you see a blue whale. They can neither drag it to sea nor bury it. The death of this whale is going to cause the areas krill and shrimp population to go up. Some fish species numbers will also go up. In some ways this can be good and in other ways it can be bad. When these populations go up the food that the krill, shrimp and fish eat will go down. When the krill, shrimp and fish run out of food they will leave to find food elsewhere causing the fish and other predators to follow and this will cause problems for fishermen. For people that live by the sea this would be a major problem because fishing is how they feed their families and its just a way of life to them.
ReplyDeleteMy article is discussing a breakthrough which harnesses light for controlled chemical radiation. Chemist Tehshik Yoon is the leader in this movement toward chemical radiation. He says often the problem with using light is that the UV rays that are often used in industries carry so much energy that its dangerous to use. The challenge is controlling the UV rays to make them useable to everyday consumers. One way the scientists are using is the use of solar cells which capture the suns rays and converts to energy. In a solar cell metals release electrons to make electricity. This process is based off of plants during photosynthesis. In photosynthesis plants absorb light, and release high energy electrons. Experiments that have been previously conducted have used square structures with four carbons that would be difficult to make with UV or heat. The ultimate goal for the scientists is to be able to make chemicals as easily as plants do which is by sunlight.
ReplyDeletethis is a very interesting article steven i am very impressed by your skills of copy and paste
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DeleteThe universe is made up of matter and energy. Matter anything that has mass and takes up space is pretty straightforward and easy to grasp, but energy is a bit more abstract. In physics, energy is the ability to do work, or the ability to move or elicit change in matter. In effect, the amount of energy something has refers to its capacity to cause things to happen.Energy has a few important properties. For one, energy is always "conserved" it cannot be created or destroyed. It can, however, be transferred between objects or systems by the interactions of forces. For example, the energy in vegetables is transferred to the people who digest them. Another property of energy is that it comes in multiple forms, and can be converted from one form to another. The two most common or basic forms of energy are kinetic energy and potential energy. Kinetic energy is the energy of motion. A ball has kinetic energy as it flies through the air — it has the ability to do work in that it can act upon other objects with which it collides. Potential energy is a kind of stored energy that objects have because of their position or configuration. A cup on a table has potential energy; if you knock the cup off the table, gravity will accelerate the cup, and its potential energy will convert to kinetic energy. A stressed bow also has potential energy. Many other types of energy exist, including electrical, chemical, thermal, electromagnetic and nuclear.
ReplyDeleteEnergy is used in four distinct sectors: transportation, industry, residential and commercial use and electric power generation. Three major types of energy are consumed by these four sectors: direct heat, transportation fuel and electricity.In the eighteenth century, with the perfection of the steam engine, the world began to understand the power of machines. Steam-driven machines could do the work of hundreds of men and dozens of animals. Coal became the fuel of choice for steam-powered machines because it was convenient, portable and readily available, and burned efficiently. Soon coal was powering locomotives, factories and farm implements around the nation. Coal was also used to heat buildings and smelt metal ores. In 1880, a coal-fired steam engine powered the world’s first electric generator, Thomas Edison’s plant in New York City
ReplyDeleteIs this what they use in Dickert?
DeleteMagnetic devices depend on the manipulation of magnetic properties. Magnetism comes from an atom when the electrons rise up and spin around. It says that the magnetic properties can prefer one direction over another, this being called directional dependence. In order for this direction to be changed, a large amount of energy is needed. The team of Harold Brune, has worked together with other teams to discover what the maximum level of magnesium for a single cobalt atom. The study showed that the maximum level is at 60 millimeter, electron volts. This was credited as being remarkable. It also had the longest spin of its lifetime. Although it was, “fundamental,” this is going to be an opening for many more advances in the field of science. This single atom can be used as a future quibit, or future information. Our understanding of energy in the environment is growing each day, and this is just making way for more experiments.
ReplyDeletewhat website did you get this off of ?
Deletewww.ScienceDaily.com
DeletePioneering research could provide a significant boost in the vital quest to harness wave power as a viable renewable energy source for the future. Scientists have studied how wave energy developers can more accurately measure, and predict the wave conditions within wave energy test sites. Deployed wave measurement buoys and used wave modeling to show how variations in wave size and strength could be resolved, the results should aid developers to better predict sea conditions within wave energy test sites, which is the crucial factor governing how much energy can be produced. With ongoing support from the Regional Growth Fund, these methods are now being applied to the Wave Hub and Fab Test energy test sites in Cornwall, to support industrial partners testing all these sites. The research has been co-authored by Dr. Ian Ashton and Dr. Lars Johanning, both from the Renewable Energy department based at the University of Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall and was supported by the National Environmental Research Council (NERC) flowbec project.
ReplyDeleteCoy Holloway
ReplyDeleteAbout 16% of global final energy consumption presently comes from renewable resources, with 10% of all energy from traditional biomass, mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from hydroelectricity. New renewable account for another 3% and are growing rapidly. At the national level, at least 30 nations around the world already have renewable energy contributing more than 20% of energy supply. National renewable energy markets are projected to continue to grow strongly in the coming decade and beyond. Wind power, for example, is growing at the rate of 30% annually, with a worldwide installed capacity of 282,482 megawatts at the end of 2012.
Renewable energy resources exist over wide geographical areas, in contrast to other energy sources, which are concentrated in a limited number of countries. Rapid deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency is resulting in significant energy security, climate change mitigation, and economic benefits. In international public opinion surveys there is strong support for promoting renewable sources such as solar power and wind power.
What website did this information come off of?
DeletePlanet Earth sprites are large electrical discharges that occur above thunderstorms They resemble reddish orange jellyfish with bluish tentacles streaming down
ReplyDeleteBut while sprites require thunderstorms not all thunderstorms produce sprites Recent studies suggested that ionosphere irregularities were required for these ghostly Red electrical flashes that mysteriously hover above some thunderstorms have long puzzled scientists but now new research reveals how these alien like atmospheric sprites form Sprites form at irregularities in the plasma or charged particles of gas in the ionosphere the layer just above the dense lower atmosphere about 37 to 56 miles (60 to 90 kilometers) above the Earth's surface flashes to occur but evidence for them was lacking In the study pasko and his colleagues studied high-speed video of sprites and developed a model for how the strange lightning evolves and disappears They used the model to try to recreate sprite forming conditions Several sources could be causing these irregularities in the plasma The existence of a previous sprite is the most obvious but there were none that occurred in the region studied that occurred close enough in time unless the irregularities last much longer than scientists suspect Alternatively meteors could cause irregularities as they move through the upper regions of the ionosphere before burning up in the lower atmosphere due to friction To study sprite dynamics the team used a two dimensional mathematical model of the movement of charged particles in the sprite They used the model to recreate how sprites are formed using it to see how the streamers originated and how large the plasma irregularities were.
Coyotes are a major predator of white tails in the Eastern United States. The eastern coyotes are larger than the orginal western coyotes. The predation is affecting the population of the deer popultaion. Lawmakers in Pennsylvania has proposed to place a bounty on coyotes. If the deer population decreases then the growth of plants would over populate. But the fawns of the deer are in mortal danger with the increasing population of the coyotes. The coyotes are disrupting the ecosytems in the eastern United States because the deer population has never faced an predator as the likes of the coyotes. On average only 1 in 2 fawns survive in their first three months of life. The deer already have to worry about black bear and bobcats. So the coyotes are just posing more of a threat. Reducing hunting can be used to offset mortality from natural predators.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140509110746.htm
DeleteThe white house host climate change rountable
ReplyDeleteJazmyn Muller
5/12/14
The topic that I have chosen was global warming. I chose global warming because it relates to energy and saving energy. Global warming is a gradual increase in the overall temperature of the earth’s atmosphere that is generally attributed to the greenhouse effect caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide. The roundtable is teaming up to fight off climate change. They want to discuss and find ways to reduce harmful emissions of carbon dioxide. All countries are being affected by global warming and climate change. The NCA (National Climate Assessment) plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and prepare communities consisting of with stand of a warming planet. Only with the inclusion of human influences can models reproduce the observed temperature changes. Percent changes in the amount of precipitation falling in very heavy events. Climate change also offers an interesting opportunity to consider fascinating interconnected processes on earth.
This is a interesting article
DeleteDid you know that Biodegradable products damages the environment too. Examples can be anything like foodstuffs; banana peels, orange peels and vegetables. Buying these products is an easy way to reduce guilt about your impact on earth. Biodegradable products can do more harm than good if they end up in landfills. When biodegradable trash ends up in landfills, it breaks down more quickly than ordinary garbage does. The result is a more rapid release of methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Some landfills collect methane gas and convert it to energy, but many don’t. So, in those cases, biodegradables may actually be worse for the environment than ordinary trash. The findings don’t really mean that all biodegradables are bad. In many cases, they are greener, especially if they are decomposed in the right way. The whole point of this article was to simply point out to some that biodegradables are not always everything that they are made out to be.
ReplyDeleteKiller whales and other marine mammals more likely hear sonar signals more than we have known. The reason this is true is because available sonar systems emit signals known to be near their hearing range. Sonar systems are designed to create signals beyond the range of hearing of animals, according to the article. The sound is very soft and able to hear only when the animals are within a few hundred meters of the source. The signals will not cause any actual tissue damage, but it is possible that it affects the behavior of some marine mammals, who rely on sound to communicate, negative, and find food. The team found that most of the energy is transmitted near the frequency of 200 kilohertz, but some of the sound leaks out to lower frequencies, and hearing range of killer whales and other animals. The three systems studied produced signals as low as 90, 105 and 130 kilohertz.
ReplyDeleteVery nice article they are referred to ocra whales also....
DeleteMany harmful substances in waste water stubbornly resist being broken down by biological waste water treatment plants. Researchers have developed a photochemical reaction system in which water can be treated at high flow rates by UV light without having to add chemical catalysts.you can use it for many thing, for instance instead, the researchers are essentially utilizing the "self-healing" power of water aided by photolysis (a.k.a. photochemical dissociation), the principle of photolysis is based on splitting water molecules using photons.You can also use it for cleaning agent residuals and pesticides as well as pharmacological substances are reaching environmental waters. The shorter the wavelength of light, the higher the photons' energy. Researchers therefore use light sources in this system that emit UV light exclusively in the region of 172 nanometers. These photons enter water, they split the H2O molecules, forming highly reactive hydroxyl radials as a result.
ReplyDeleteMy article was about how NASA discusses West Antarctica and climate change today. They are hosting a media teleconference today (May 12) to announce new findings from the ever-changing West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Researchers worry that the collapse of West Antarctica’s glaciers would significantly speed up sea-level rise. The collapse to an Unstoppable glacial retreat would unload millions of tons of ice into the sea. The Third U.S. National Climate Assessment details the regional effects of climate change and examines the potential impacts of global warming on the national economy. The report found that all parts of the country are being affected by human-caused climate change, ranging from more intense heat waves to torrential rainfall to sweeping wildfires. "For decades scientists have recognized that this area of the massive ice sheet covering Antarctica is particularly vulnerable to the effects of a changing climate," NASA officials said in a statement. "The majority of the ice sheet in West Antarctica is grounded on bedrock that lies below sea level, making it susceptible to melting from warm ocean waters."
ReplyDeleteScientists have taken a large step toward making a fiber-like energy storage device that can be made into clothing and power wearable medical monitors, communications equipment or other small electronics. Their super capacitor packs an interconnected network of graphene and carbon nanotubes so tightly that it stores energy comparable to some thin-film lithium batteries. The device maintains the advantage of charging and releasing energy much faster than a battery. The fiber-structured hybrid materials offer huge accessible surface areas and are highly conductive. The researchers have developed a way to continuously produce the flexible fiber, enabling them to scale up production for a variety of uses. To date, they've made 50-meter long fibers, and see no limits on length. To improve the energy density by volume, the researchers designed a hybrid fiber. A solution containing acid-oxidized single-wall nanotubes, graphene oxide and ethylenediamine, which promotes synthesis and dopes graphene with nitrogen, is pumped through a flexible narrow reinforced tube called a capillary column and heated in an oven for six hours.
ReplyDeleteAll life that has survived must have adapted to conditions of its environment. Temperature, light, humidity, soil nutrients, etc., all influence any species, within any environment. However life in turn modifies, in various forms, its conditions. Some long term modifications along the history of our planet have been significant, such as the incorporation of oxygen to the atmosphere. This process consisted in the breakdown of carbon dioxide by anaerobic microorganisms that used the carbon in their metabolism and released the oxygen to the atmosphere. This led to the existence of oxygen-based plant and animal life, the great oxygenation event. Other interactions are more immediate and simple, such as the smoothing effect that forests have on the temperature cycle, compared to neighboring unforested areas.
ReplyDeleteResearchers at Northwestern University are the first team of science-knowledgeable students to develop a solar cell with great efficiency. The solar cell uses tin material to absorb light rather than lead perovskite, which is dangerous for the environment. Taking the lead out of this type of solar cell is a breakthrough in environmental science developments. Tin has shown great work as an efficient solar cell. The cell’s new structure brings a higher percentage of efficiency to the absorbance of light energy. This different and more conservant material for the solar cell will provide more stability and perseverance to the environment because tin is not as harmful as lead. The functionality and new system introduced to the solar cell system is dynamic and brings a new take to the function of the device. The way the machine absorbs energy is more economically and environmentally safe to use. The different material will lessen the price of the solar cell, making it more obtainable to the public.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140504133211.htm
Can plants provide petroleum-derived chemicals? Yes, there are a few possible outcomes. Plan scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory found that certain enzymes responsible for desiderating fatty acids, the building blocks of oils, can link up to efficiently pass intermediate products from one enzyme to another. Getting plants to accumulate high levels of more healthful polyunsaturated fatty acids, or unusual fatty acids that could be used as raw materials in place of petroleum –derived chemicals in industries processes, are a few possible outcomes. Previous studies by a group called Shanklin’s group has shown that a distinct kind of desaturase enzyme that floats freely in plant plastids, mini plan cell “organs” where many metabolic processes, including photosynthesis. They take place and pair up with themselves to form structures called dimmers The group also studies baker’s yeast and determined that its membrane –bound desaturase formed dimmers too.
ReplyDeleteThe West Antarctic ice sheet has long been considered at risk due to global warming, and today two studies report, based on new evidence, an unstoppable retreat has begun. The ice sheet holds enough water to raise sea level by several feet. The slow degradation would have a destabilizing effect on the rest of the ice sheet, which holds enough ice to raise global sea level by 10.to 13 feet. The glinding line between the ice sheet and ocean is retreating inward based on airborne and satellite data.The sea-level rise projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will likely need to be revised upward, based on these findings, said Sridhar Anandakrishnan, professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, University Park. Anandakrishnan spoke at the NASA press conference, but was not involved in the study.the red regions are areas where temperatures have increased the most during the last 50 years, particularly in West Antarctica. The dark blue regions have had a lesser degree of warming.One potential way in which the retreat of these glaciers could be stabilized would be if during its retreat the grounding line -- the boundary between floating and grounded ice -- were to reach a region of the ice-sheet bed where the bed slopes towards the ocean," said glaciologist Jonathan Kingslake of the British Antarctic Survey, who wasn't involved in either study. "The authors show that almost no regions of such stabilizing bedrock exist in this region behind the current grounding line. Hence, they conclude, the retreat is likely to continue unstably for decades to come."The idea that the glacier's retreat once started could not be stopped has been discussed since the 70s, Anandakrishnan said. "We've crossed a critical threshold. We finally have enough observations to put it all together and say 'We're finally in this state.'the collapse could take anywhere from 200-900 years. simulations provide strong evidence that the process of marine ice-sheet destabilization is already under way on Thwaites Glacier, largely in response to high subshelf melt rates," the authors wrote in the study, to be published May 16 in Science. "Similar behavior also may be under way on neighboring Pine Island Glacier.
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