We are half way through the week and things are heating up. This morning Kent begins his Environmental Science class with his daily review of the past class sessions. In today's review session Kent gets into physics. He explains the various ways elements form bonds. He explains how to make the outer-most layer of electrons in the electron cloud, called valence electrons, full. The class learns how to make dot diagrams to illustrate the elements structure and how they bond together. As they wrap up their physics discussion, Kent introduces a new topic, the atmosphere.
They first discuss the ozone. Such a crucial part of our life, it is. The ozone layer protects everyone from the sun's UV rays. Because we were on the topic of the sun, the class began to question why some people burn and others tan. Ones genes and origin is the best answer we have for such a question. If your ancestors were from the tropics you probably have darker skin than Northern Europeans. If your ancestors are Asian, Middle Eastern or Latino then you would most likely have variations of tan skin.
From talking about the atmosphere we switched to carbon dioxide. We learned how carbon dioxide relates to soda, dry ice and bubbles. We also heard true stories about missing taste buds (never lick dry ice), mysterious deaths (don't sleep near a river of CO2 in Africa) and strange soda (always have your soda carbonated). I must say, not only did we learn interesting information, but were entertained at the same time. While they were on the subject of carbon dioxide, Kent took them out to see it at work with bubbles.
After their unusually long break they find out what scientists do when he or she does an experiment. Kent gives the students a sneak peak of what they will be doing on Friday. They will be acting as scientists, researching, experimenting and reporting whatever their topic is about.
Kent introduces the class to a fancy calculator where you can adjust many factors to find out how much light passes up per square meter (watts per meter squared). The students begin to play with the functions. For each trial they change how many km you are from 100-1. This information is plugged into a spreadsheet and graphed to show the wattage that goes through at different heights. This wraps up another intense day of Environmental Science.