“Nesho Bonchev” High School 

Panagyurishte

Page maker: Donka Boyadzhieva

Editor: Stiliana Kirilova

Researchers: Tsvetka Nozhdelova & Marinnela Karamarinova

Autors: DSMTS

Hello dear Reader!

While you are reading this magical book,

you will realize what is happening with

the environment. These things are terrible.

In this way we slowly destroy the Earth.

Are you ready about that?

Go ahead.

Think about it!

Content:

1. Environment /pages 5-8/
2. Natural environment /pages 9-14/
3. Historical environment /pages 15-16/
4. Acid rain /pages 17-18/
5. Solar power /pages 19-22/
6. Hydrogen fuel /pages 23-26/
7. Climate change /pages 27-32/

Environment is everything that is around us. It can be living or non-living things. It includes physical, chemical and other natural forces. Living things live in their environment. They constantly interact with it and adapt themselves to conditions in their environment. In the environment there are different interactions between animals, plants, Insects soil, water, and other living and non-living things.

Since everything is part of the environment of something else, the word environment is used to talk about many things. People in different fields of knowledge use the word environment differently. Electromagnetic environment is radio waves and other electromagnetic radiation and magnetic fields. The galactic environment refers to conditions between the stars.

In psychology and medicine, a person’s environment is the people, physical things and places that the person lives with. The environment affects the growth and development of the person. It affects the person’s behaviour, body, mind and heart.

Discussions on nature versus nurture are sometimes framed as heredity vs environment.

In biology and ecology, the environment is all of the natural materials and living things, including sunlight. If those things are natural, it is a natural environment.

Environment includes the living and nonliving things that an organism interacts with, or has an effect on it. Living elements that an organism interacts with are known as biotic elements: animals, plants, etc., abiotic elements are non living which include air, water, sunlight etc. Studying the environment means studying the relationships among these various things. An examples of interactions between non-living and living things is plants getting their minerals from the soil and making food using sunlight. Predation, an organism eating another, is an example of interaction between living things.

Some people call themselves environmentalists. They think we must protect the natural environment, to keep it safe. Things in the natural environment that we value are called natural resources. For example; fish, sunlight, and forests. These are renewable resources because they come back naturally when we use them. Non-renewable resources are important things in the environment that are limited for example, ores and fossil fuels. Some things in the natural environment can kill people, such as lightning.

• Ecological units which are natural systems without much human interference. These include all vegetation, microorganisms, soil, rocks, atmosphere, and natural events.
• Universal natural resources and physical phenomena which lack clear-cut boundaries. These include climate, air, water, energy, radiation, electric charge, and magnetism.

A person’s environment is the events and culture that the person lived in. A person’s beliefs and actions depend on his environment. For example, Thomas Jefferson and Julius Caesar owned slaves. Modern people mostly think it is wrong to own slaves. But in Jefferson’s and Caesar’s environments slavery was normal. So, their actions did not look as wrong in their societies.Its simple defination is: Interaction between man and environment in past.

Acid rain is a rain or any other form of precipitation that is unusually acidic, meaning that it has elevated levels of hydrogen ions (low pH). It can have harmful effects on plants, aquatic animals and infrastructure. Acid rain is caused by emissions of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which react with the water molecules in the atmosphere to produce acids. Some governments have made efforts since the 1970s to reduce the release of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere with positive results. Nitrogen oxides can also be produced naturally by lightning strikes, and sulphur dioxide is produced by volcanic eruptions. Acid rain has been shown to have adverse impacts on forests, freshwaters and soils, killing insect and aquatic life-forms, causing paint to peel, corrosion of steel structures such as bridges, and weathering of stone buildings and statues as well as having impacts on human health.

Solar power is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV), indirectly using concentrated solar power, or a combination. Concentrated solar power systems use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam. Photovoltaic cells convert light into an electric current using the photovoltaic effect.

Photovoltaics were initially solely used as a source of electricity for small and medium-sized applications, from the calculator powered by a single solar cell to remote homes powered by an off-grid rooftop PV system. Commercial concentrated solar power plants were first developed in the 1980s. The 392 MW Ivanpah installation is the largest concentrating solar power plant in the world, located in the Mojave Desert of California.

As the cost of solar electricity has fallen, the number of grid-connected solar PV systems has grown into the millions and utility-scale solar power stations with hundreds of megawatts are being built. Solar PV is rapidly becoming an inexpensive, low-carbon technology to harness renewable energy from the Sun. The current largest photovoltaic power station in the world is the 850 MW Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, in Qinghai, China.

The International Energy Agency projected in 2014 that under its “high renewables” scenario, by 2050, solar photovoltaics and concentrated solar power would contribute about 16 and 11 percent, respectively, of the worldwide electricity consumption, and solar would be the world’s largest source of electricity. Most solar installations would be in China and India. In 2017, solar power provided 1.7% of total worldwide electricity production, growing at 35% per annum.

Hydrogen fuel is a zero-emission fuel when burned with oxygen. It can be used in electrochemical cells or internal combustion engines to power vehicles or electric devices. It has been started to be used in commercial fuel cell vehicles such as passenger cars, and has been used in fuel cell buses for many years. It is also used as a fuel for the propulsion of spacecraft.

Hydrogen is found in the first group and first period in the periodic table, i.e. it is the first element on the periodic table, making it the lightest element. Since hydrogen gas is so light, it rises in the atmosphere and is therefore rarely found in its pure form, H_2. In a flame of pure hydrogen gas, burning in air, the hydrogen (H₂) reacts with oxygen (O₂) to form water (H₂O) and releases energy.

2H₂(g) + O₂(g) → 2H₂O(g) + energy

If carried out in atmospheric air instead of pure oxygen, as is usually the case, hydrogen combustion may yield small amounts of nitrogen oxides, along with the water vapor.

The energy released enables hydrogen to act as a fuel. In an electrochemical cell, that energy can be used with relatively high efficiency. If it is used simply for heat, the usual thermodynamics limits on the thermal efficiency apply.

Hydrogen is usually considered an energy carrier, like electricity, as it must be produced from a primary energy source such as solar energy, biomass, electricity (e.g. in the form of solar PV or via wind turbines), or hydrocarbons such as natural gas or coal. Conventional hydrogen production using natural gas induces significant environmental impacts; as with the use of any hydrocarbon, carbon dioxide is emitted.

Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time. Climate change may refer to a change in average weather conditions, or in the time variation of weather within the context of longer-term average conditions. Climate change is caused by factors such as biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics, and volcanic eruptions. Certain human activities have been identified as primary causes of ongoing climate change, often referred to as global warming. There is no general agreement in scientific, media or policy documents as to the precise term to be used to refer to anthropogenic forced change; either “global warming” or “climate change” may be used.

Scientists actively work to understand past and future climate by using observations and theoretical models. A climate record—extending deep into the Earth’s past—has been assembled, and continues to be built up, based on geological evidence from borehole temperature profiles, cores removed from deep accumulations of ice, floral and faunal records, glacial and periglacial processes, stable-isotope and other analyses of sediment layers, and records of past sea levels. More recent data are provided by the instrumental record. General circulation models, based on the physical sciences, are often used in theoretical approaches to match past climate data, make future projections, and link causes and effects in climate change.

Factors that can shape climate are called climate forcings or “forcing mechanisms”. These can be either “internal” or “external”. Internal forcing mechanisms are natural processes within the climate system itself. External forcing mechanisms can be either anthropogenic—caused by humans or natural . Physical evidence to observe climate change includes a range of parameters. Global records of surface temperature are available beginning from the mid-late 19th century. For earlier periods, most of the evidence is indirect—climatic changes are inferred from changes in proxies, indicators that reflect climate, such as ice cores, dendrochronology, sea level change, and glacial geology. Other physical evidence includes arctic sea ice decline, cloud cover and precipitation, vegetation, animals and historical and archaeological evidence.

Dear Reader!

Hello again! You have already

learned about Environment and its destroyer.

We hope to think about what we do to

the environment every day.

DSMTS from ‘Nesho Bonchev’ High School

Panagyurishte

Resources:

1.www.google.bg

2.www.wikipedia.org