| Questions | 5 |
| Topics | Biosphere, Cold Front, Infiltration, Mesosphere, Work |
The biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships. This includes their interactions with the lithosphere (the rigid outer part of the earth, consisting of the crust and upper mantle), hydrosphere (all surface water), and atmosphere (the envelope of gases surrounding the planet).
A cold front is a warm-cold air boundary with the colder air replacing the warmer. As a cold front moves into an area, the heavier cool air pushes under the lighter warm air that it is replacing. The warm air becomes cooler as it rises and, if the rising air is humid enough, the water vapor it contains will condense into clouds and precipitation may fall.
The water then accumulates as runoff and eventually returns to bodies of water or is absorbed into the Earth (infiltration) and becomes part of the water table, an underground resevoir of fresh water.
In the mesosphere, temperature again drops as altitude increases until the coldest point in the Earth's atmosphere, the mesopause, is reached where temperatures fall to −225 °F (−143 °C).
Work is performed on an object when an applied force causes displacement along the same vector. Measured in joules (J) or newton-meters (Nm), work is calculated by multiplying force times displacement: \(W = \vec{F}\vec{d}\)