Re: Density of gas mixture

[Robert A Cohen <bbq@ESU.EDU>]

On Tue, 20 Jul 1999, Doug Craigen wrote:

> One of my  examples to show how people learn particular situations as
> absolute rules - I ask how it is that hot air rises but the air is
> colder the higher up you go in the atmosphere (where all the hot air
> went)....  most people are at a loss, having never even realized a
> contradiction between two of their absolute rules.

Hmmm...because the source of heat is at the ground (either because the
ground absorbs radiation from the sun or because the ground is closer to
the magma which we know is very hot) and the air cools as it rises because
it gets further away from the heat source?  This is the explanation most
often given to me by students.

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| Robert Cohen               Department of Physics       |
|                            East Stroudsburg University |
| bbq@esu.edu                East Stroudsburg, PA  18301 |
| http://www.esu.edu/~bbq/   (570) 422-3428              |
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