The equation for the reaction between carbon dioxide and water may be introduced for appropriate students. Carbon dioxide present in exhaled air is blown into a flask containing an indicator sensitive to small changes of pH in the appropriate region of the pH scale, and the consequent colour changes observed and recorded. When carbon dioxide reacts with water a weak acid is formed.
This is a relatively brief and straightforward exploration of the reaction of carbon dioxide and water at a simple level, which should take no more than 15 minutes. RSC Yusuf Hamied Inspirational Science Programme.Introductory maths for higher education.The physics of restoration and conservation.(See The Ocean’s Carbon Balance on the Earth Observatory.) It is likely that changes in ocean temperatures and currents helped remove carbon from and then restore carbon to the atmosphere over the few thousand years in which the ice ages began and ended. In the meantime, winds, currents, and temperature control the rate at which the ocean takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Over millennia, the ocean will absorb up to 85 percent of the extra carbon people have put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, but the process is slow because it is tied to the movement of water from the ocean’s surface to its depths. However, since carbon concentrations in the atmosphere have increased, the ocean now takes more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases. The hydrogen reacts with carbonate from rock weathering to produce bicarbonate ions.īefore the industrial age, the ocean vented carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in balance with the carbon the ocean received during rock weathering. Once in the ocean, carbon dioxide gas reacts with water molecules to release hydrogen, making the ocean more acidic. At the surface, where air meets water, carbon dioxide gas dissolves in and ventilates out of the ocean in a steady exchange with the atmosphere. However, the slow carbon cycle also contains a slightly faster component: the ocean. It takes a few hundred thousand years to rebalance the slow carbon cycle through chemical weathering. If carbon dioxide rises in the atmosphere because of an increase in volcanic activity, for example, temperatures rise, leading to more rain, which dissolves more rock, creating more ions that will eventually deposit more carbon on the ocean floor.
For comparison, humans emit about 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year-100–300 times more than volcanoes-by burning fossil fuels.Ĭhemistry regulates this dance between ocean, land, and atmosphere.
At present, volcanoes emit between 130 and 380 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. When volcanoes erupt, they vent the gas to the atmosphere and cover the land with fresh silicate rock to begin the cycle again. The heated rock recombines into silicate minerals, releasing carbon dioxide. When the plates collide, one sinks beneath the other, and the rock it carries melts under the extreme heat and pressure. Earth’s land and ocean surfaces sit on several moving crustal plates. The slow cycle returns carbon to the atmosphere through volcanoes.
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