Suppose you were near a site with mercury pollution and were told that a plant could take mercury up, but that it would emit mercury vapor. Would it be worth planting these plants? Why or why not? (This is an expected phenomenon.)
What will be an ideal response?
This is an interesting discussion question because it raises the question of give
and take in pollution reduction. It cannot actually be answered without further information,
as is typical of science.
Among some of the questions it would be wise for us to consider before answering such a
question as posed above are:
•What is the concentration of vapor in local air?
•What proportion of remediated mercury appears as vapor?
•Would repeated plantings lead to progressive reductions despite the emission of the
mercury vapor?
•Will the vapor spread the pollution more widely?
Note that these are experimental questions, and cannot be answered without measurements,
another hallmark of science.
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You find a rock containing radioactive potassium-40 and its decay product argon-40. You assume that all the argon-40 was made from radioactive decay of potassium-40. The rock now has twice as much argon-40 as potassium-40; that is, 2/3 of the original potassium-40 has decayed into argon-40, whereas 1/3 remains in the rock. Based on this graph, about how old is the rock?
A) 1 billion years B) 1.25 billion years C) 2 billion years D) 2.5 billion years
The parallax shift of a nearby star would be ________ that of a more distant star.
A. greater than B. brighter than C. the same as D. faster than E. less than
When Philadelphia's temperature is 40°F and Miami's temperature is 80°F,
A) Miami is twice as hot as Philadelphia. B) Miami is warmer than Philadelphia. C) both of these D) neither of these
A 1.6-kg block on a horizontal frictionless surface is attached to an ideal massless spring whose spring constant is 190 N/m. The block is pulled from its equilibrium position at x = 0.00 m to a displacement x = +0.080 m and is released from rest
The block then executes simple harmonic motion along the horizontal x-axis. What is the velocity of the block at time t = 0.40 s? A) 0.82 m/s B) -0.82 m/s C) 0.30 m/s D) -0.30 m/s E) 0.00 m/s