Life, Resources And Atmospheric Change

Question 1

What is the primordial soup theory?

Answer 1

Is states that billions of years ago the atmosphere was rich in nitrogen, hydrogen, ammonia and methane
Lighting struck causing chemical reactions and producing amino acids
These amino acids collected in a primordial soup
Amino acids combined to produce organic matter which evolved into living organisms

Question 2

Who carried out an experiment to prove this theory and when?

Answer 2

In the 1950’s

Miller and Urey

Question 3

What was the experiment?

Answer 3

They sealed the gases in their apparatus and heated / applied electrical charge to them for a week
They found that amino acids were made but not as may as there are on earth

Question 4

Why would we fractionally distil air?

Answer 4

To get a variety of products such as nitrogen and oxygen to use in industry

Question 5

Describe the fractional distillation of air?

Answer 5

Air is filtered to remove dust
It’s then cooled at around -200 degrees and becomes a liquid
During cooling water vapour condenses and is removed
Carbon dioxide freezes and is removed
Liquified air enters the fractionating column and Is slowly heated
The remaining gases are separated by fractional distillation, oxygen and argon come out together so another column is used to separate them

Question 6

What are the problems with increasing carbon dioxide levels?

Answer 6

Is causes global warming (a type of climate change)
The oceans are a natural co2 store as they absorb it from the atmosphere but the increase is making them too acidic such is killing coral and shell fish and means in the future they won’t be able to absorb anymore co2