Life, Resources and Atmospheric Change Flashcards
What does the primordial soup theory state? Explain it
Billions of years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere was rich in nitrogen, hydrogen, ammonia and methane. Lighting struck, causing a chemical reaction between the gases, resulting in the formation of amino acids
The amino acids collected in a primordial soup
Primordial soup: What happens to the newly formed amino acids?
Gradually combined to produce organic matter which eventually evolved into simple living organisms
What experiment was done by Miller and Urey? What does it mean?
1950s - trying to prove the primordial soup theory
They sealed the gases in their apparatus, heated them and applied an electrical charge for a week. They found that amino acids were made, but not as many as there are on earth which suggests that the theory is on the right lines, but isn’t quite right.
Describe how we can fractionally distil air to get a variety of products (nitrogen and oxygen) (6)
1) Air is filtered to remove dust
2) it’s then cooled to around -200ᵒC and becomes a liquid
3) During cooling, water vapour condenses and is removed
4) CO2 freezes and is removed
5) The liquefied air then enters the fractionating column and is heated slowly
6) The remaining gases are separated by fractional distillation. Oxygen and argon come out together so another column is used to separate them
What is burning fossil fuels releasing?
carbon dioxide
Why does an increase in CO2 do?
Causes global warming - a type of climate change
Relate the oceans to CO2
The oceans are a natural store of CO2 - they absorb it from the atmosphere
However the extra CO2 we’re releasing is making them too acidic. This is bad for coral and shellfish and also means that in the future they won’t be able to absorb any more CO2
