Jocelyn Diaz Mar/09/13 WALC 1st, 2nd and 5th Period

Snow Trip Paper

The sun is the earth's heat engine it strikes the earth's surface at different angles and latitudes. The earth's surface is at different places, so all of these differences create uneven heating which is also expressed as wind. Heat capacity is the measure of the heat energy required to increase the temperature of an object by a certain temperature interval. For example, how much heat energy is required to increase the temperature of a small lake from 50 degrees fahrenheit to 51 degrees fahrenheit, depends on the object's heat capacity. There are two types of heat capacity, they are determined by the object. For example, objects that require more heat energy to increase its temperature have a high energy capacity, and the objects that require less heat energy to increase in temperature have a low heat capacity. It also depends on its location too, for example, water has high energy capacity. If you compare the ocean to land, you see that land has a lower heat capacity, because it will heat up faster than the ocean. High heat capacity water stores heat energy better as well, heat energy takes longer to escape from water. Even though it heats up slow, it cools down pretty slow too. Land will heat and cool faster than the ocean. When the earth's surface heats up, it also heats up the air on top and when the surface is cool so will the air on top start to cool down. Angle of exposure to the sun is at the angle in which sunlight hits the surface of the earth. This depends according to its location and time of the day. When the sunlight that is directly from overhead at a 90 degree angle will impart more energy than sunlight that shines at a shallower 45 degree angle. The reason why this happens is because the sunlight beams down at a shallower angle it is spread out over a larger are. Secondly, because sunlight beaming

down at a shallower angle has to pass through more of the earth's atmosphere, which causes more loss of energy causes by the disruption and scattering. Pretty much the closer to 90 degrees the sun shines on an area, the more energy it can give. More energy means more heat, so that area becomes hotter than other areas where the sun comes in at a shallower angle. Heat also affects the air pressure. Air is made up of molecules that move around. When a mass of air above an area heats up, the air molecules become more agitated. They move around in even greater orbits, which means they are taking up more space. The air mass expands and becomes less dense and so the pressure or weight of the air becomes less over that area. When the air is cooler the air molecules are not as agitated, they move around in smaller orbits and the mass of the air contracts and becomes denser. Warmer air rises because it is lighter and colder air falls because it is heavier. The reason air from a high-pressure area will always travel to a low-pressure area is because nature abhors a vacuum and likes balance. When air heats up, it expands creating a low-pressure area to equalize the the imbalance in pressure. The warmer the less dense air rises, because there is cooler and more dense air occupying the space. A ballon is good example of that because when a ballon is full of air, that ballon is being compressed by the rubber. Compared to the air outside the ballon, the air inside the ballon is in a high-pressured area. Pressure and location have a lot to do with the air and in some way it has to do with the temperature as well.

The seasons tell us what part of space we are in - cosmically. The earth is hurtling through space at 80,000 miles per hour in and elliptical orbit around the sun, along with the planets. It rotates on its axis once every 24 hours(that determines each day). The earth's orbit is not on a circular space like many people think, but on a oval shape. The average distance from the sun to earth is about 93 million miles but there are times in which