And steam was the most common way to power the looms, steam ships, and locomotives that drove the Industrial Revolution. Explosives were another very important thing. Blowing out train tunnels or other building projects all relied on explosives, which was another way of harnessing the power of gases and being able to use them in a productive way.
Similarly, the steel revolution: The idea that Henry Bessemer patented and spread around the world was that you could use air in order to reach into the iron, pull out the carbon molecules, and turn iron into the more flexible and stronger metal we now call steel.
At the time, he was going through a divorce and getting re-married, so he had two families to support. He was in dire straits financially and needed some extra income. One day, he read a story about a family that suffocated to death because the refrigerator in their apartment had leaked.
The gases they were using as refrigerants at the time were all poisonous. Unfortunately, a rival group at General Motors was also working on refrigeration, and to solve the problem of poisonous gases they invented what we now know as Freon. It was a much safer gas and also very good as a refrigerant. Only later we found out Freon is very nasty, in that it can chew up ozone and thus helped contribute to the hole in the ozone layer and climate change.
Haber was one of those dual figures in science in that he did some really great work and also did some really awful work, that still gives us shudders today. He was the person most responsible for inventing the Haber process, which takes nitrogen out of the air and turns it into ammonia, which can then be used in fertilizers, which today help sustain billions of people all over the world. Unfortunately for his legacy, he was also one of the people instrumental in inventing gas warfare during World War I.
There had been gas warfare before him, but he transformed it by using chlorine, among other agents, making it the horrific thing it is today. When we hear about poison gas attacks in Syria, we can trace them directly back to Haber, years ago. One common misconception is that methane is the molecule in your farts that produces the bad smell. Methane is flammable but odorless. Most of the odor is due to a couple of other molecules, like methanethiol and dimethyl sulfate , which are related to methane but are not the same thing.
Around , the highest paid performer at the Moulin Rouge was Joseph Pujol , who had figured out a way to inhale air into his butt then fart it back out.
Some very highbrow people loved him. Freud supposedly kept a picture of Le Petomane on his wall and would draw upon him when developing his theory on anal fixation. The idea of controlling the weather has gone in and out of fashion throughout the 20th century. In the past, scientists sprinkled silver iodide into clouds in the hope that raindrops would coalesce around the silver iodide molecules and build up to be heavy enough that they would fall out as rain: precipitation on demand.
They even thought they could control hurricanes and other big storms with it, by diffusing them before they reached land. The idea of controlling weather is now regarded as a bit disreputable. But it has survived in a different form and is now being revived to control climate change. The idea is to sprinkle something like sulfur dioxide high up in the atmosphere, which would reflect sunlight back out into space and potentially keep the Earth cooler.
Sour cream: One evening in the summer of I retired to bed with a glass of milk. During the night there was a tremendous thunderstorm with plenty of lightning and the following morning the remainder of the milk had curdled into a solid mass. My elderly relatives who remembered pre-refrigerator days held it as common knowledge never to leave milk out in a thunderstorm. I had never heard of this. What process had taken place? Bags of air: On a recent plane flight, I started wondering what purpose the small bag serves on the emergency air line.
The bag is between the air supply and the emergency mask that drops if there is a sudden loss of cabin pressure. Itch hitch: Occasionally, I get two simultaneous itches, for example, one in my side and one in my ankle. Scratching one relieves the itch in both places. On other occasions I have been given an injection by a doctor and have noticed that the sharp pain caused by the needle is echoed in another part of my body.
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However, at the equator the tropopause layer is located at seventeen to eighteen kilometres above earth. The second layer of air above the troposphere is called stratosphere. Temperatures stop decreasing in the lower part of this layer.
The temperature is around degrees Celsius here. In the higher stratosphere temperatures are rising to zero degrees Celsius at forty-seven kilometres above earth.
Within the stratosphere solar radiation creates ozone O 3 from oxygen O 2 , between twenty and forty kilometres above the earth's surface. This reaction causes this part of the stratosphere to be referred to as 'ozone-sphere'. The upper part of the stratosphere is called stratopauze. The third layer of air is called the mesosphere.
This layer can be found over fifty-two kilometres above the earths' surface. The upper part of the mesosphere is called the mesopause. Within the mesosphere, temperatures are decreasing once more. Mesosphere temperatures are around degrees Celsius. The fourth layer of air, the thermosphere is located over ninety kilometres above earth.
Temperatures rise enormously in this layer, causing the highest temperature to be above one thousand degrees Celsius. The density of air is very low in this layer, therefore the forces between molecules nearly vanish. The lightest molecules can escape through the lowest layer of the thermosphere, the exosphere. The exosphere does not have a clear border, because it fades into space.
The lowest ninety kilometres of the atmosphere are often referred to as the hemisphere, because the air composition is fairly constant. All air above this layer is referred to as hydrosphere, because the air has a very different composition in this area. When a large quantity of air has one identical dampness and temperature, it is rated as one separate type of air.
The air type must cover a horizontal area of one thousand kilometres. The height of an air type can vary between one hundred metres to coverage of the entire troposphere. An air type forms when an air mass has been circulating three to nine days in an area that is located completely above either land or sea and where the wind does not blow.
Within this area the air mass receives its specific properties. Above land these areas can be deserts or savannas. As soon as the air leaves the area its specific properties will slowly fade and eventually disappear entirely. Air types that have received their specific properties in an area above sea are much more humid than air types that have received specific properties above land.
The air types that are shaped above oceans are called marine air types. Air types that are shaped above land are called continental air types. We can distinguish four separate basic air types, which can all be divided up between marine and continental types: 1.
Equatorial air. The temperatures lie between 25 and 30 degrees Celsius and its moisture content is high. Tropical air. Marine tropical air has a high moisture content and a temperature of around 25 degrees Celsius.
Continental tropical air has a low moisture content and a temperature of over 50 degrees Celsius. Polar air. Marine polar air is always humid and is relatively hot in winter and cold in summer. Continental polar air very dry and cold in winter. Temperatures can fall to below degrees Celsius. In summer this type of air is warm, yet still very dry. Arctic air. This type of air is very cold. Marine arctic air is warmer than continental arctic air in winter.
Wind is basically air that is in motion. The air moves as a consequence of various types of air pressure on earth. Wind direction and wind-force can vary greatly. Wind-force is often referred to as cardinal points. Wind-force is expressed as a number called a Beaufort number, on the Beaufort scale.
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