On completion of this subject the student should be able to:
1. State the scope of environmental physics;
2. List the main parameters that determine the survival of the species in the physical environment of plants and animals;
3. Explain the behaviour of a system and state the simplest way of describing it in terms of governing concepts such as Boyle's law and Newton's laws of motion;
4. Explain the central notion of the exchange of radiation, heat, mass and momentum between organisms and their environment;
5. Describe rates of various transfer and exchange between organisms and their environment by electrical analogues or use of Ohm’s law.
Scope of environmental physics including the main components determining the survival of species; Review of Gas laws; The physical properties of gases in the exchanges that take place between organisms and their environment; Transport laws involving molecular transfer processes; Direct and diffuse solar radiation, terrestrial radiation as energy source for the environment; Heat and mass transfer sustained by molecular diffusion through a boundary layer in contact with the surface; Review of heat transfer by free and forced convection and conduction in solids and still gases; Steady state heat balance in particular the heat flow in soil, its thermal properties and analysis; Profiles and fluxes of crop/trees and the measurement of flux above canopy by method of aerodynamic, Bowen ratio and Eddy correlation; Resistance analogues as a means of interpretation of measurements of rate of exchange of entities in an environment, e.g. carbon dioxide and growth, sulphur dioxide and pollutant fluxes to crops.
Monteith, J. L., Unsworth, M. H., Principles of environmental physics, Chapman and Hall, New York, USA, 1990.
Continuous assessment 40%
Written examination 60% (1×3 hrs.)
Phone: +675 473 4999 Fax: +675 475 7776
