In-class quiz #3

1. [5 pts] The atmospheric density goes down as altitude increases. This has the effect of causing collisional chemical reaction rates near the ground to be greater than at higher altitudes.
   
   
2. [4 pts] The Earth’s secondary atmosphere was produced by a process called planetary outgassing. This atmosphere thinned down as the Earth cooled and the atmospheric water vapor condensed into the oceans.
   
   
3. [5 pts] A meteor strike is thought to have created a global-scale cloud of dust and smoke that resulted in a sudden cooling of the Earth’s atmosphere and subsequent mass extinction of cold-blooded organisms. Evidence shows that this occurred about 65 million years ago.
   
   
4. [3 pts.] In order for the concentration of a pollutant in some defined volume to be constant over time, these source rate and sink rate of the pollutant must be equal to each other.
   
   
5. [4 pts] In the air pollution box model, increasing the residence time of a pollutant requires us to reduce the efficiency of the sink processes. This then causes the pollution concentration to go up.
   
   
6. [3 pts] In outdoor environments and in the absence of winds, the most difficult way to reduce air pollution concentrations anthropogenically is to increase the volume in which air pollution is dispersed. [a steady-state box model concentration parameter]
   
   
7. [6 pts] In an adiabatic compression of a gas, no heat is added, but the pressure and temperature increase. This same process occurs in an air parcel that is moving downward in the atmosphere.