CHM 110 - CHEMISTRY AND ISSUES IN THE ENVIRONMENT

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Week # 9 – April 9 - 16

Please keep active and be on-line 2-3 times per week. Most of you are keeping up nicely with responses to the discussion. Most of you finished Topic 8 and the Issue # 3. Good job on those.

Nineth Week Assignments due on April 16:

Assignments past due:
Topic 8
Lab 4
Issue 3

This might be a good week for some of you to go back and catch up on some labs you may have missed. Late labs get only one point deducted for being late.

1. On-line Discussion: Do the readings in the text book and correlate that with the Topic 9 Global Air Pollution and Problems.

This should be a very interesting topic. In one of the questions you get a chance to see daily contour maps of the ozone hole, as well as, animated maps showing a season of the ozone hole for a period of 3 months. When people talk about the the ozone hole they are usually referring to the one that forms at the South Pole in "our Fall", but the Southern Hemisphere spring. So you will need to look at some dates in Sept, Oct, Nov. to see how long it stays there. This year the ozone hole is slightly smaller than in the past. In September 2002, the hole actually split into two pieces - can you find the dates for when this happened? You will learn that this is not present on a constant basis, but only for about 2-3 months. I also have an editorial from the Chicago Trib about someone mixed up about ozone. What is the difference between good and bad ozone?

2. Issue #4. On-line Discussion:

ISSUE 4: Should the Use of Methyl Bromide be Banned as an Ozone Depleting Chemical?

As is the usual practice, I am going to let you spread this out over a two week period. This will ultimately be due on April 23. The main purpose is to allow a little more discussion back and forth.

You have probably already done a little research in Topic 9 about the causes of the ozone hole, this debate will focus on further measures that are proposed to prevent further depletion of the ozone layer. In addition, I have made contact with a strawberry farm in California which uses methyl bromide. Although 3 years after that initial contact, I think that they have quit using it. Dave Peck of Manzanita Farms wrote me a special letter in answer to some questions that I had about the use of methyl bromide. You can read about this in the introduction to the issue.

A look ahead:

1. Try to find your water bills to be used in Lab 5.

2. You will need to begin collecting various kinds of plastics for Lab 6.

3. Exam 3 is ready for those that want to start early. It is due on April 30.
Go to the Exam Index page for various versions of the exam.