Environmental Science Assignment

Energy Flow

Questions:

1. Where do plants get the energy they need to grow?                  
2. What do plants use the sun's energy to manufacture?                     
3. What do plants use most of their energy for?                                  
4. How much of the energy that the plant captures through photosynthesis ends up stored as starch in the kernel?                    
5. For what does the cow use the energy from the corn?                         
6. How much of the energy stored in the corn gets passed on to you in burgers?                                                                                
7. For what do you use the energy in the burgers?                               
8. How would eating more plants help us better feed the many people in the world?                                                                                   
9. What else besides energy do we get from plants and animals? When we eat them?                                                                                     

 

Answers:

          1.      They get energy from the sun

          2.      To manufacture sugars from water and carbon dioxide

          3.      Plants use their energy mostly in photosynthesis and reproducing flowers. 

          4.      5 %

       5.      It use the energy to keep warm, to produce and power its muscle cells, and to take care of other needs.  

         6.       10%     

         7.      It will help people to grow, jump or think, or do anything else.

         8.      We will get 100% of the captured solar energy.      

         9.       We can get nutrients we need to grow, fats, and others.

 

The Lorax

 

Question 1: what did the once-ler do to upset the balance in the ecosystem?

Question 2: what effect did his business have on the living things in the ecosystem?

Question 3: what effect did his business have on the living things in the ecosystem?

Question 4: what is the moral lesson from the story "The Lorax"?

Answer 1: once-ler cut all the tree.

Answer 2: it affects the animals because they have no place to live and no place to find their needs and without animals the world is not balanced.

Answer 3: it helps their town so that they will not get tired but it reacts to the ecosystem and the it is harmed and all the living things in it specially the plants and animals.

Answer 4: the moral lesson is that harming the ecosystem is a bad thing and if you do something bad everybody including you will suffer and harming the ecosystem leads to a bad effect like air pollution,water pollution,acid rain, storms, and other calamities.

Questions:

1. Why do you think the polyps only feed on plankton at night?
2. What do you think would happen to reef dwellers (e.g., coral, parrot fish, sea cucumbers) if the algae were not able to photosynthesize?
3. What is a double diet? What do you think the advantages are, if any, of having a double diet?
4. How does energy flow through the reef ecosystem?

Answers:

            1.                Polyps likely feed on photosynthetic plankton at night because during the day, the plankton use the sun to produce food. At night, they are therefore full of energy to pass on to the coral polyps.

2.                 If the reef dwellers were not able to photosynthesize they wouldn't have a source of energy and would die.

3.                A  double diet is having a doing both things like the ruffled sea slug that eat plants and get energy from the sun . The dvantage of double diet is that you can have 100%  of the solar energy from the sun.

4.                A coral reef ecosystem is very complicated and are found in shallow, sunny areas where not many nutrients are found. Sunlight is turned into carbohydrates by plankton and kelp which is used by fish and other animals including the coral and the fishes wastes help the kelp and plankton to grow.

Questions:

1.      Why are the four major layers of the atmosphere separated where they are

2.   What increases the temperature in the stratosphere?

3.      Can planes fly in the mesosphere? Why or why not?

4.      On what does the temperature in the thermosphere depend?

Answers:

            1.      Based on temperature, the atmosphere is divided into four layers: the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere.

2.      Within this layer, temperature increases as altitude increases

3.      Weather balloons and jet planes cannot fly high enough to reach the mesosphere.

4.      The thermosphere is the fourth layer of the Earth's atmosphere and is located above the mesosphere.

 

 questions:

1. "When you see sprouts, give thanks to the decomposers." Explain what this means, using examples.
2. Why did the narrator call the earthworm the "king of decomposers"?
3. What do decomposers recycle?
4. What kinds of organisms are decomposers? Give specific examples.

 Answers:

1. Decomposers eat the world's waste and digest and nourished the soil that makes the plant healthy.

   2. Most earthworms are decomposers because they are known for feeding on undecayed leaf and other plant matter.

   3. The world's wastes

   4. Bacteria are the primary decomposing organism, but there are many others, including fungi, actinomycetes, worms and beetles.

NITROGEN CYCLE

Questions:

  1.    The atmosphere is 80% nitrogen: why do you think plants and animals can't use  nitrogen as it is found in the atmosphere?

  2.     Explain what is meant by nitrogen fixation.

  3.     What is the role of bacteria in the nitrogen cycle?

  4.    Why don't legumes need nitrogen-containing fertilizers?

  5.    Why is nitrogen so important for living things?

  6.     What are the processes involved in the nitrogen cycle?

Answers:

1.    Nitrogen has limiting factors for the growth in plants and animals because  it is found in a gas form.

2.     It meant that the nitrogen can be useful by changing it to a useful thing. Nitrogen fixation is one process by which molecular nitrogen is reduced to form ammonia.

3.    Bacteria breaks down the nitrogen into nitrates that can be consumed by plants. Bacteria that nitrifies ammonium compounds in the soil (called "nitrifying bacteria").Bacteria that nitrifies nitrites (NO2-) in the soil (also called "nitrifying bacteria"). Bacteria that denitrifies nitrates

(NO3-) in the soil (called "denitrifying bacteria"). Bacteria that "fixes" nitrogen (called "nitrogen-fixing bacteria").You also have bacteria that putrefies nitrogenous waste (like urea) and the protein in dead organisms. This type of bacteria is called putrefying bacteria.

4.     Legumes "fix" nitrogen in nodules on their roots, so they do not need additional nitrogen-containing fertilizers.

5.    An atom of nitrogen lies at the heart of all amino acids, which are not only the building blocks of protein

6.    Nitrogen fixation, ammonification, nitrification, dentrification, assimilation.