Week+Three+14+Week

Week Three Assignments

This week your assignment is to read Chapter Four and to take your first exam, which covers chapters 1-4. You have a quiz on Blackboard for chapter Four, and you have a post to write, which is located here: http://schmidtphysicalgeography.wikispaces.com/Week+Three+14+Week at the bottom of this page.

For exam one, there is a study guide – which I have posted in the exams folder. I have also created a discussion board for extra credit. You can ask and answer questions about the study guide and I will give you extra credit. If you ask a questions, 2.5 points, if you answer 2.5 points with a total of 5 points possible. What I am hoping is that if there is a term on the study guide you don’t understand, you can ask a question, like What is Albedo? And then someone else can give the answer. I am giving you this opportunity for extra credit because I allow my onsite students to turn in the study guide for extra credit. I want to give you a similar opportunity. I just tried this with my 18-week class, and it went pretty well, so I hope your class likes it and finds it helpful too.

I have a few things to say about chapter four:

Last semester my online students thought that this chapter was hard. So this time, I would like to say a few things about the chapter:

In the beginning, the text talks about energy. It is important to understand that energy is different to science than to the way we think of it socially. It is all about how fast atoms and molecules are moving around. The text mentions several kinds – don’t get bogged down in all of that, kinetic energy is the one most important to physical geography. The temperature scales – we use Fahrenheit but the rest of the world uses Celsius. It is good to know how to convert between the two because if you travel to Canada or Mexico, they both use Celsius and if you don’t know how to make the conversion, you will be dressed funny : ) Kelvin not used in physical geography – skim that part.

The sun is the only source of energy for our planet, even coal and oil are ancient forms of fixed solar energy. Think about where coal and oil come from… The text talks about our sun, you don’t have to worry about that, far more important stuff in this chapter. The electromagnetic spectrum – the only parts important to physical geography are ultra violet, visible light, and infrared. Learn about those three, the others are interesting, but not on the quiz. Know the difference between short and long wave radiation and where each come from. Know radiation as it pertains to this chapter – not the same as like from a nuclear disaster. Understand absorption and reflection and how color plays a role in both – please know that while this is simple, it has HUGE implications! Think of ice caps, think what happens when they melt, what is under? Dark colored water. How does that affect temperature on earth? Do you see the problem with the loss of ice now?

Understand transmission and scattering – has to do with why skies are blue and sunsets are red. Also has to do with why cloudy days are not our coldest or warmest and why clear days are hotter and clear nights are colder. Greenhouse Effect – it’s actually a good thing, understand this and how it works. Conduction is good, but not so important as advection and convection – learn these (come back again in chapter 6). Adiabatic warming and cooling – text gets very scientific – it’s simple, adiabatic cooling is how air cools as it rises, and adiabatic warming is how air warms as it sinks (like days when we have the Santa Ana winds). This also comes back in chapter 6. Atmospheric moisture contains a lot of energy – evaporation and condensation as actually cooling and warming processes – mentioned here briefly, also comes back again in chapter 6. Albedo – this is an important term to understand, it’s simple but also has far reaching implications. Please see the graphic in the Prezi, and the article about loss of arctic sea ice in the same frame. As for the variations in heating by latitude and season, this I don’t think is too bad, because here you are bringing together what you have learned about seasons and day length and atmospheric obstruction (clouds or pollution) from chapters one and three.

The next thing is about the difference between the heating of land and water – this is very important for physical geography. Land heats and cools to a greater extent than water. It takes a lot of energy to change the temperature of water – we refer to the amount of energy it takes to change the temperature of something from one degree to another as specific heat. Water has a very high specific heat, it takes a lot of energy to change the temperature of water – but you know this! You have probably all put a mug of water in the microwave before and you know that the mug gets warm first – because it takes more energy to change the temperature of the water. This has implications for weather and climate, like if we compare the temperature of Los Angeles or San Diego and San Bernardino – you know we get much hotter in the summer and much colder in the winter, and this is because of the difference between how land heats and cools and how water heats and cools. The textbook has a nice section about all of the implications of this – like which hemisphere has the most land and who has the most temperature extremes. Do read that section! Last part of the chapter talks about Climate Change. It picks up where we left off in chapter three talking about greenhouse gasses and what happens when we put them in the atmosphere. I do want for you to understand this. Unfortunately I do not believe that the book is strongly worded enough about these problems, and we learn more all the time so the book is outdated here. I do want you to know the major culprit for climate change and how it is getting out into the atmosphere.

I hope this helps you with chapter four. There are also several videos for chapter four which I hope you find helpful. Of course if you have any problems or questions, please feel free to ask, e-mail me at ProfessorLisaS@gmail.com or text me at 760 440 8977.

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