Re: atmospherics

Posted by Roger Critchlow-2 on Jun 12, 2012; 6:33pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/atmospherics-tp7580159p7580162.html

Nick --

N2 weighs 28 gm/mole, O2 weighs 32 gm/mole, Ar weighs 40 gm/mole, CO2 weighs 44 gm/mole, and H2O weighs 18 gm/mole.

Why would anyone expect the lighter components of a mixture to fall down more than the heavier ones?  If anything, you'd expect the heavier ones to concentrate toward the bottom.

And why would anyone expect a mixture to spontaneously separate into pure components?  That happens in real life like where?

As it happens, CO2 is the heaviest normal component and it does pool in confined spaces often enough that CO2 alarms are available in hardware stores.  Propane, C3H8, weighs 44 gm/mole and is notorious for pooling in confined spaces and then exploding, often in the bilge of a boat and spectacularly.

-- rec --

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

So, somebody asked me, in my role as a weather nerd, how come the nitrogen in the atmosphere doesn’t all fall to the bottom on still nights and suffocate us all.  I asked the question of stupid-answers-to-stupid-questions-asked-by-stupid-people.com and THEY said, well, there’s just too much going on.  N molecules and the O molecules are just too busy, what with convection and windcurrents, and all, to separate, even on still nights.  Now, that business doesn’t prevent cold molecules of Nitrogen and Oxygen to separate  from warm ones, or wet ones (not sure what that means) to separate from dry ones. I was hoping that somebody on FRIAM could give some sort of a clue what kind of a mixture AIR is?  It is suddenly seeming kinda special. 

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

http://www.cusf.org

 

 

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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org