All this Aristotelean physics is confusing to the student. See the
actual temperature distribution in the atmosphere. Both the Sun and
the Earth contribute to heating in the atmosphere by radiation, for
example, an effect which is unimportant below 15 kilometers. Heating
from within Earth is a small effect as well. There's roughly a
kilowatt per square meter of insolation on Earth's surface, and that
number varies widely depending on latitude, time of day, season of
the year, degree and nature of cloud cover ... the list is long, and
all of those effects are larger than the little ones.
My car has an outdoor thermometer. I climb more than 1000 feet to
get to Simon Fraser University, and I often see the temperature
inversion mentioned earlier; it's not even rare. It is informative
to take notice of that profile and then to note the sharpness of the
smog top often visible over Vancouver*, the altitude of which is
usually less than that of the university. Clearly, though I derive
the adiabatic lapse rate for my students in our sophomore course, I
do *not* tell them that the atmosphere, especially when measured in
the boundary layer next to the surface of Burnaby Mountain,
typically exhibits this temperature profile.
Students often see physics as an exercise in studying a nonexistent
universe. Their belief is that physics does not model the world they
live in. Models that fail even the simple test of casual observation
should be avoided! Simple physics doesn't explain everything. Even
our complete physics cannot yet explain everything; indeed physics
is incomplete. We should let on to our students that we know this.
The real atmosphere problem is complicated. Any explanation of it
should be heavily posted with caveats.
Beyond the simple cases (which must be modelled and treated properly
mathematically as this discussion shows so well) one should not
construct elaborate explanations for physics students. It will only
confuse them, and simple explanations are usually incomplete when
they are not just plain wrong!
Leigh
*Yes, Vancouver does have smog, but not nearly so much as my native
Los Angeles, and wind and rain remediate the problem frequently.