Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Question of the day

Here is a graph of the Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.




(graph taken from newscientist.com)

Watch this NBC video.

Assuming that this is the new normal, what do you expect to happen based on what you know about how exponential relationships work.  Based on the doubling time, when would you expect the average global temperature to reach one full degree?

Please post your comment.

6 comments:

  1. It took about 60 years for the global temperature to double, and based on that I think that the temperature of the earth will double in 60 years. It is an exponential relationship and the growth factor is 2. The equation for this relationship is y= .3(2)^x. It would take around 40 years for the global temp to reach 1 degree because if .6 gets doubled in 60 years to 1.2 degrees, then to get to 1 degree it would be around 40 years.

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  2. Based off the graph and knowledge of exponential relations,it shows that about 50-60 years the earth's temp. doubles and at the year 2000 it was at .6 which means that if that doubles in 50-60 years than it will be 1.2 so to reach 1 full degree it will take anywhere from 30-40 years.

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  3. It will take about 30-40 years because in 2000 it was about .6 and that doubled is 1.2 which would take about 60 years because it took 60 years to first double and for it to reach one whole degree it could take anywhere from 30-40 years.

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  4. it took 60 years for the tempature to double. Using the equation .3(2)^x. .3 is the y int. and 2 is teh growth factor. For the climate to reach 1, the year would appromatley 40 years. Looking a tthe graph and noticing the 1940 it has points relative to zero and one point that is at .1 so i doubled 40 and got 40.

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  5. For the temperature to double it took about 60 years. Since this relationship is exponential, the equation you would use would be climate= .3 (2)^year. In the year 2000, its at about .4 and so it needs .6 to get to a climate of 1. so, 6/10 is 80%, 80%of 60 years would be 48 years. So I'm estimating that it will take about 48 years for it to reach one full degree.

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  6. The temperature will double at about 60 years. Like Sophie said the equation would be climate=.3(2)^year since it is exponential. Also, like what Sophie said again, it will take about 48 years to reach one degree.

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