A publisher has agreed to send out chapters of a textbook I am writing
on Environmental Physics for review for potential publication. If anyone
is interested in reviewing chapters, please let me know (off list) and I
will pass your name to the publisher. The book is intended for a junior
level course with one year of physics as background. The outline is
below. I would be happy for any comments.
Thanks
kyle
1. Population.
World population and trends. The effects of people on the environment.
Water supply. Food production. Pollution (water, air, ground).
Environmental success stories (acid rain, ozone hole). Basic principles:
exponential growth, scaling laws.
2. Energy Transfer.
Basic principles: First Law of thermodynamics, temperature, conduction,
convection, radiation, evaporation, efficiency, electrical transmission.
Applications of heat flow for buildings. Combined cycle systems.
Window coatings. Lighting. Conservation in general. Conservation and the
GDP.
3. Energy conversion.
Basic principle: second law of thermodynamics. Carnot cycle. Heat
engines. Refrigerators. Heat pumps, COP. Internal Combustion Engines.
Fuel Cells. Electric motors. Turbines. Real vs theoretical engines and
motors. Electric Generators.
4. Non renewable Energy.
Consumption in general (global breakdowns: by type, by country, by use).
Historical and future demand. Fossil fuels (origins of, sources,
quantities, proven reserves). Extraction techniques and energy costs.
conversion losses (e.g. coal to gasoline). Hubbert’s peak and other
models for estimating the exhaustion of a resource. Nuclear resources.
Nuclear reactions (fission, fusion). Reactor designs. Nuclear waste.
Basic principles: nuclear reactions, fuel conversion efficiency.
5. Renewable Energy.
Hydro. Wind. Biomass. Solar (photovoltaic, thermal). Tidal, geothermal,
waves, other. (amounts available, how each works, potential for
development, extraction, etc.) Basic principles: Photoelectric effect,
photo cells, solar thermal, Biodiesel, plant efficiency, ethanol,
cellulose, windmill dynamics.
6. Energy Storage.
Transportation fuels, conventional and alternative (energy content
versus weight). Hydrogen. Batteries. Compressed air. High charge
capacitors. Large scale storage. Pumped Hydro. Flywheels. Super
conductors. Trains, planes, buses, trucks, cars (efficiencies of various
transportation methods). Well to wheel efficiency. Transportation of
energy (electricity, pipes, hydrogen economy). General principles: mass,
density, chemical bonds, pressure, kinetic energy, electric charge.
7. Climate.
Climate vs weather. Climate History (long term vs short term). Climate
forcing. Malancovich cycles. Ocean circulation. Clouds. Greenhouse
effect. Climate data: ice and sea cores (isotope data, organic data).
Climate change (short and long term). Elements of climate modeling
(simple surface temperature calculations). Carbon cycle. Discussion of
the IPCC. Basic principles: isotopes, Coriolis effect, radiation
revisited: blackbody radiation.
8. Risk assessment.
Flu. Death rates. Meteors. Accident rate tables. Fault tree analysis
(example: nuclear power plant failure). Statistical risk assessment.
Perceived risk and psychological factors. Comments on economic risk.