HPR109F, Spring 2001
Final exam, Friday 4 May 2001
Chapters 1–10
Definitions (2 points each; 20
points total)
1. Primary producer.
2. Impact degassing.
3. Hydrothermal vents.
4. Stratosphere.
5. Logistic growth.
6. K-T boundary.
7. Positive feedback.
8. Troposphere.
9. Pangea.
10. Pycnocline.
Short answers (3 points each; 30
points total)
1. Describe the “biological pump.”
2. What is the oxygen minimum zone, and
how is it formed?
3. How did the Precambrian glaciations (Huronian;
late Proterozoic) differ from the more-recent glaciations?
4. How could the building blocks of life
on earth have been formed in outer space and transported here?
5. What happened to the earth when the K-T
meteorite hit?
6. What is the inverse square law, and why
is it so important? How can you derive it very simply?
7. Why are O2 and N2
not greenhouse gases?
8. How is excess heat from the tropics
transported to the polar regions?
9. What is the Ekman spiral?
10. What drives plate tectonics?
Longer answers (5 points each;
30 points total)
1. Explain how CO2 weathers
crustal rock.
2. What is the CO2-silicate
cycle, and why is it so important to long-term climate on earth?
3. How was the solar system formed?
4. When did atmospheric O2
rise, and how do we know it? What made it rise?
5. How did the earth’s atmosphere form?
What was its early composition?
6. How has the pattern of mass extinctions
on earth (intensity and frequency) varied over time, and why?
Problems
and discussion questions (10 points each; 20 points total)
1. Explain the basic forces that have
controlled change on the earth,
what the nature of those changes were and are, and the ways that the forces and
the changes may be currently affected by humankind. How does your answer to this
question differ from the way you would have answered it before you took this
class?
2. What about this class did you find: (a)
most valuable, (b) least valuable; (c) hardest; and (d) easiest? Are there any
ways in which you would adjust it to make it more valuable to next year’s
students?