| Questions | 5 |
| Topics | Cumulus Clouds, Filtering Air, Fronts, Groups, Thermosphere |
Cumulus clouds are large, puffy, mid-altitude clouds with a flat base and a rounded top. These clouds grow upward and can develop into a cumulonimbus or thunderstorm cloud.
After air enters through the nose, it passes through the nasal cavity which filters, moistens, and warms it. Further filtering takes place in the pharynx, which also helps protect against infection, and then in the trachea which is just past the epiglottis, responsible for preventing food from entering the airway.
An air mass is a large body of air that has similar moisture (density) and temperature characteristics. A front is a transition zone between two air masses.
The columns of the Periodic Table are called groups and all elements in a group have the same number of electrons in their outer electron shell. The group that an element occupies generally determines its chemical properties as the number of outer shell electrons establishes the way it reacts with other elements to form molecules. So, because each element has the same number of electrons in its outer shell, each has similar reactivity.
Temperatures again increase with altitude in the thermosphere which is the hottest (4,530 °F / 2,500 °C) atmospheric layer due to direct exposure to the Sun's radiation. However, the gas in this layer is highly diluted so even though the atoms of gas may be very high in temperature, there are too few of them to effectively transfer much heat.