I was thinking the other day upon hearing about how bad cars are because of the amount of air pollution that they spew. The measurement of chemicals and undesirable gasses per car is thousands of pounds into our atmosphere every year. No doubt, this quantity of pollution is bad but I wanted to know how much this quantity was in relation to the total atmospheric mass. After all, I wouldn’t know how concerned to be without making the measured amount relative for comparison. I determined that this should be my formula: Total mass of pollution produced by vehicles per year ----------------------------------------------------------------------- = % addition of mass to earth’s air/year Total mass of earth’s atmosphere The Numerator is the total mass of air pollution produced by vehicles*** = 13,500,000,000,000 Lb* *approx. one billion vehicles that each produce 13,500 Lbs** of pollution/year **@ 20 MPG (avg) @ 13,500 miles/year (avg) @ 13,500 lbs pollution/year ***vehicles = cars & light trucks The Denominator is the Total Mass (weight) of earth’s atmosphere: This is about 5×10 to the 18th (in Kilos) This equals: 5,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kg or 11,023,100,000,000,000,000 pounds Note: these amounts are provided by various internet sites So: 135 x 10 to the 11th ------------------------- = .00001225 = .001225% 11.0231 x 10 to the 14th So the total mass of air pollution by vehicles per year = approx. 12 ¼ thousandths of 1 percent. (I think.) So in 1000 years we will, at this rate, add 1 ¼ % to the atmosphere’s weight. This doesn’t seem to represent a very large amount of the earth’s atmosphere and I’m sure that other planets (with purer air that we can start polluting) will open up for living by then. I wonder how much is the mass produced by volcanoes?
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 17:06:53 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015