CHM 11500 Lecture 1: Introduction

• School: Purdue University
• Department: Chemistry
• Course: CHM 11500
• Professor: Chittaranjan Das

Document Summary

How humans harness energy (especially chemical energy) to do work. How human use of energy impacts the environment. How energy transformations occur on a molecular scale. Humans use energy from several sources including: Hydrogen (can be renewable or non-renewable, depending on initial energy source) Weather: meteorological conditions in a specific time and place. Climate: the average weather conditions over an extended period of time or an extended region. Climate is changing, global average temperatures are beginning to warm. Committee that analyzes the potential consequences of climate change due to human causes. Agreement among ipcc scientists (and many others) that much of the current climate change is caused by humans. Due to attributes of the earth"s revolution around the sun, certain long term climate patterns can be observed throughout history. 60,000 year long oscillation of global climate. Example: 20,000-14,000 years bp the global climate was much colder, resulting in more of earth"s water being held in the form of large glaciers.