Paper
on Thermonuclear Fusion
The sun produces energy through thermonuclear fusion. The main process happens when an atom fuses
with another atom of the same type, it then creates a heavier atom. For example
we have an atom lets just say it’s a Hydrogen atom, it fuses with another
Hydrogen atom to create a heavier atom like helium. The atoms come together
because of magnetic attraction, which we still don’t now much about. This
process of atoms fusing into heavier atoms continues until Iron is produced. When two atoms fuse together they release a
small amount of energy. Billions of atoms fusing is what makes radiation and
light from our sun. Once a star begin
fusing things heavier than iron, instead of giving off energy, they start
taking energy from the sun which eventually causes the sun to explode into a
supernova. A supernova is when the sun
has lost too much energy in its core, and then it collapses in on its self.
Creating a supernova explosion. It does not so much explode as just loses its
center of gravity and then proceeds to fling its outer layers in to space .The
majority of stars never make it to fusing iron; most burn out long before that.
When a star burns out, it turns into what we call a white dwarf. White dwarfs
are extremely hot, but are not fusing anything. They can still take millions of
years to burn out.
By Tristan Martin
Paper
on the Greenhouse Effect
The greenhouse effect
refers to how our atmosphere traps all of our harmful man made gasses mostly
carbon dioxide, warming the planet. Most
people look at this as a bad thing, which it is. We don’t want the planet to
warm/up, because if are planet warms too much our earth could become
uninhabitable. But our atmosphere is just doing what its supposed to do.
Without our atmosphere earth would be a freezing wasteland and it would be open
to radiation bombardment from the sun.
Imagine the earth as a giant spherical greenhouse, and
imagine the glass as our atmosphere. Glass
lets light and energy in, it also keeps harmful radiation out, but once that
heat and energy are in, it has a much harder time getting out. So that is what’s happening to earth. Imagine
someone parked their car in the green house and left it running. That green
house is going to slowly fill up with carbon dioxide and soon all of the plant
and little insects in that greenhouse are going to die from lack of oxygen. So, what can we do to fix this? Well we could
make a big hole in the green house. That might work, but that would let harmful
radiation in which can cause cancer and other harmful things. It would also
make great changes to Earths climate. So the best way to stop all the life in
the greenhouse from dying would be to ether turn off the car or buy an electric
one.
By Tristan Martin
