Monday, January 4, 2010

WORKING WITH NUMBERS AND GRAPHS

1. Some quantities encountered in environmental science appear so enormous or so minuscule as to "boggle the mind." What general strategy would you suggest to render such quantities more meaningful? Teachers can discuss what strategy that should be adopted while teaching these types of numbers to students.

For example,

(a) Amount of water in the atmosphere: 1.3 x 1013 m3

(b) The distribution Ocean. Seas in volume: 1,338,000,000 km3

(c) Global energy demand in 1990 : 3.9 x 1020 J(oules) per year

(d) Dioxin concentration in lake trout from certain Lake (1987): 38 ppt (parts per trillion)

(e) Amount of solar energy that reaches earth’s surface: 13X1021calories/year

(f) Groundwater flow rate in a certain aquifer: 5 x 10-7 m/s

(g) Worldwide topsoil loss (1990s): 23 billion tonnes per year

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