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greenhouses



I have just received a copy of a textbook to consider for my fall (!)
astronomy course, Chaisson and McMillan "Astronomy Today" (2nd ed.). They
first give the standard (erroneous) explanation of how greenhouses work,
but add a footnote:

Actually we now know that this is only a minor part of the reason that green-
houses work the way they do - the interior stays warm mainly because the glass
prevents convection from carrying heat away - but the name has stuck.

"We now know" means, I guess, that they just found out. I can't remember,
but I may have told them that when I used the first edition some years ago.
They are accessible by email and were very helpful when I had a conceptual
problem understanding shepherd satellites the first time I used their text.
For those of you who consider Professor Irwin Corey's validation technique
useful, I direct you to this text. There are errors in it (there's a big
one in the succeeding paragraph if you have access to a copy) but I think
it is a very good book for a course at this level and I will probably adopt
it. They say that the magnitude of the greenhouse effect on Earth is 40 K,
by the way.

Leigh