Global Warming

There’s some recently published research on climate change¹ that you can easily incorporate into your next lesson on metric conversions and unit analysis. The article gives a report on ocean heat content (OHC) measurements.

For the past few years when I’ve been covering introductory concepts in thermodynamics, I’ve made a connection to climate change. My students and I calculate the energy that has been gained by Earth’s oceans as heat, using the following equation that is familiar to students of introductory and general chemistry:

With Earth Day approaching, you might want to try out the experiment published in the Journal of Chemical Education.¹ It outlines a fantastic way to demonstrate the warming influence that atmospheric CO₂ has on our planet. I followed the procedure and offer a video of the results.²

Chemical Connections to Climate Change

In Chemical Mystery #6, I used chemistry to crush a metal can. To do so, concentrated sodium hydroxide solution (about 35% NaOH by weight) was added to a can that was almost completely filled with carbon dioxide gas. The can was then sealed. The carbon dioxide gas in the can reacted with the added sodium hydroxide: