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Acidic Solution: Has more hydrogen ions than hydroxide ions and has a pH of less than 7.
Affluenza: The unsustainable addiction to overconsumption and materialism exhibited in the lifestyles of many developed countries.
Atom: Basic building blocks of matter.
Atomic Number: Equal to the number of protons in the nucleus of each of its atoms.
Basic Solution: Has more hydroxide ions than hydrogen ions and has a pH greater than 7.
Biodegradable Pollutants: Are complex chemical pollutants that living organisms break down into simpler chemicals.
Causes of Environmental Problems: 1. Environmental Ignorance/Apathy 2. Unsustainable Use of Resources 3. Poverty 4. Not Including Final Outcome Prices 5. Population Growth
Chemical Change (Chemical Reaction): There is a change in the chemical compositions of the elements or compounds involved.
Chemical Formula: Shows the number of atoms or ions of each type in a compound.
Chromosomes: Combinations of genes that make up a single DNA molecule, together with a number of proteins.
Common-Property (Free-access resources): Individuals do not own these resources and they are available to users at little or no charge.
Compound: Two or more different elements held together in fixed proportions by attractive forces called chemical bonds.
Critical Mass: Amount of fissionable nuclei needed to sustain a nuclear fission chain reaction.
Deductive Reasoning: Involves using logic to arrive at a specific conclusion based on a generalization or premise.
Degradable Pollutants: Are broken down completely or reduced to acceptable levels by natural physical, chemical, or biological processes.
Developed Countries: Highly industrialized and have a high average per capita GDP.
Developing Countries: Low-income countries.
Ecological footprint: Amount of biologically productive land and water needed to supply an area with resources and to absorb the wastes and pollution produced by such resource use.
Ecology: Biological science that studies the environment.
Economic Development: The improvement of human living standards by economic growth.
Economic Growth: Increase in the capacity of a country to provide people with goods and services.
Electromagnetic Radiation: Energy travels in the form of a wave as a result of the changes in electric and magnetic fields. (Another type of kinetic energy)
Electron: Tiny particle moving around the outside of the nucleus of an atom.
Element: Chemical whose distinctly different atoms serve as the basic building blocks of all matter.
Energy: The ability to do work and transfer heat.
Energy Efficiency (Energy Productivity): A measure of how much useful work is accomplished by a particular input of energy to a system.
Energy Quality: A measure of an energy's source's ability to do useful work.
Environment: The sum of all living and nonliving things that affect any living organism.
Environmental Degradation: When you exceed a resource's natural replacement rate and the available supply begins to shrink
Environmental Science: An interdisciplinary study that integrates information and ideas from the natural sciences that study the natural world and the social sciences that study how humans and their institutions interact with the natural world.
Environmental Wisdom Worldview: We are part of and totally dependent on nature and nature exists for all species, not just for us, and we should encourage earth-sustaining forms of economic growth and development and discourage earth-degrading forms.
Environmental Worldview: Set of assumptions and beliefs about how people think the world works, what they
Environmentalism: Social movement dedicated to protecting the earth's life support systems for us and other species. Political in nature (working to pass environmental laws, etc.)
Environmentally Sustainable Economic Development: Goal is to use political and economic to encourage environmentally beneficial and more sustainable forms of economic development.
Environmentally Sustainable Society: One that meets the current and future needs of its people for basic resources in a just and equitable manner without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
Eukaryotic (Organism): Surrounded by a membrane and has a distinct nucleus and several other internal parts called organisms.
Experiment: Procedure a scientist uses to study a phenomenon under known conditions.
Exponential Growth: A quantity increases at a fixed percentage per unit of time. Starts off slowly, but after a few doublings, it grows to enormous numbers.
Feedback Loop: Occurs when an output of matter, energy, or information is fed back into the system as an input and leads to changes in that system.
Flows or Throughputs: Rate of flow of matter, energy, or information through a system.
Four Principles of Sustainability: 1. Reliance of solar energy 2. Biodiversity 3. Nutrient recycling 4. Natural Population Control
Frontier Environmental Worldview: View by European colonists settling in North America in the 1600s that the continent had vast resources ans was a wilderness to be conquered by settlers clearing and planting land.
Frontier Science: Preliminary scientific data, hypothesis, and models that have not yet been widely tested and accepted.
Genes: Coded units of information about specific traits that are passed from parents to offspring during reproduction.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP): The annual market value of all goods and services produced by all firms and organizations, foreign and domestic, operating within a system.
Half-life: The time needed for one-half of the nuclei in a given quantity of a radioisotope to decay and emit their radiation to form a different isotope.
Heat: The total kinetic energy of all moving atoms, ions, or molecules within a given substance, excluding the overall motion of the whole object.
High-quality Energy: Energy that is concentrated and can perform much useful work.
High-quality Matter: Concentrated, typically found at the earth's surface, and has great potential for use as a matter resource.
High-throughput (high waste) Economy: Attempt to boost economic growth by increasing the one-way flow of matter and energy resources through their economic systems.
Hypothesis: Educated guess that attempts to explain a scientific law or certain scientific observations.
Inductive Reasoning: Involves using specific observations and measurements to arrive at a general conclusion or hypothesis.
Inorganic Compound: All other compounds not classified as organic compounds.
Input: Matter, energy, or information entering a system.
Isotopes: Two or more forms of a chemical element that have the same number of protons but different mass numbers because they have different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei.
Junk Science: Scientific results or hypothesis presented as sound science without having undergone the rigors of the peer review process.
Kinetic Energy: Energy that matter has because of its mass and speed or velocity.
Law of Conservation of Energy or First Law of Thermodynamics: In all physical and chemical changes, energy is neither created nor destroyed, although it may be converted from one form to another.
Law of Conservation of Matter: In any physical or chemical change, matter is neither created nor destroyed but merely changed form one form to another.
Living Sustainablely: Living off natural income replenished by soils, plants, air, and water, and not depleting or degrading the earth’s natural capital that supplies this income.
Low-quality Energy: Energy that is dispersed and has little ability to do useful work.
Low-quality Matter: Dilute, often located deep underground or dispersed in the ocean or atmosphere, and usually has little potential for use as a material resource.
Low-throughput (low-waste) Economy: Economy based on working with nature by recycling and reusing discarded matter; preventing pollution; conserving matter and energy resources by reducing unnecessary waste and use; not degrading renewable resource; etc.
Macromolecule: Larger and more complex organic compounds that make up the basic molecular units found in living organisms.
Material Efficiency (Resource Productivity): Total amount of material needed to produce each unit of goods or services.
Matter: Anything that has mass and takes up space.
Matter Quality: A measure of how useful a form of matter is to humans as a resource, based on its availability and concentration.
Matter-recycling-and-reuse Economy: Mimics nature by recycling and reusing most of our matter outputs instead of dumping them into the environment.
Molecule: A combination of two or more atoms of the same or different elements held together by chemical bonds.
Natural Capital: The natural resources and natural services that keep us and other species alive and support our economies. Not fixed.
Natural Radioactive Decay: A nuclear change in which unstable isotopes spontaneously emit fast-moving chunks of matter (alpha or beta particles), high-energy radiation (gamma rays), or both at a fixed rate.
Negative (corrective) Feedback Loop: Causes a system to change in the opposite direction.
Neutral Solution: Equal number of hydrogen ions and hydroxide ions, pH of 7.
Neutron: Elementary particle in the nuclei of all atoms.
Nondegradable Pollutants: Are chemicals that natural processes cannot break down.
Nonrenewable resource: Pollutants are larger, dispersed, and often difficult to identify,
Nuclear Change: Occurs when nuclei of certain isotopes spontaneously change or are made to change into nuclei of different isotopes.
Nuclear Fission: Nuclear change in which the nuclei of certain isotopes with large mass numbers are split apart into lighter nuclei when struck by nuetrons.
Nuclear Fusion: A nuclear change in which two isotopes of light elements, such as hydrogen, are forced together at extremely high temperatures until they fuse to form a heavier nucleus.
Organic Compound: Contain at least two carbon atoms combined with each other and with atoms of one or more other elements.
Output: Matter, energy, or information leaving a system.
Paradigm Shift: Occasionally new information or ideas that disprove and overthrow a well-accepted scientific theory.
per capita Ecological Footprint: Average ecological footprint of an individual in an area.
per capita GDP: The GDP divided by the total population at midyear.
Perpetual Resource: On a human time scale, it is renewed continuously. (Solar Energy)
Persistence: Measure of how long the pollutant stays in the air, water, soil, or body.
pH: Measures the acidity of a solution based on its concentration of hydrogen ions.
Physical Change: Process that alters one or more physical properties of an element or a compound without changing its chemical composition.
Point source: Pollutants are a single, identifiable sources.
Pollution: The presence of chemicals at high enough levels in air, water, soil, or food to threaten health, survival, or activities of humans or other living organisms.
Pollution Cleanup (output pollution control): Involves cleaning up or diluting pollutants after they have been produced.
Pollution Prevention (input pollution control): Reduces or eliminates the production of pollutants.
Positive Feedback Loop: Causes a system to change further in the same direction.
Potential Energy: Energy that is stored and potentially available for use.
Poverty: Inability to meet one's basic economic needs and is concentrated mostly in the southern hemisphere.
Prokaryotic (Organism): A membrane surrounds the cell, but the cell contains no distinct nucleus or organelles enclosed by membranes.
Proton: Positively charged particle in the nuclei of all atoms.
Radioactive Isotopes (Radioisotopes): Unstable isotopes.
Recycling: Involves collecting waste materials, processing them into new materials, and selling these new products.
Renewable Resource: Can be replenished fairly rapidly (hours to several decades) through natural processes as long as it is not used up faster than it is replaced.
Reuse: Using a resource over and over in the same form.
Science: An attempt to discover order in the natural world and to use that knowledge to make predictions about what is likely to happen in nature.
Scientific (or natural) Law: A description of what we find happening in nature over and over in the same way.
Second Law of Thermodynamics: When energy changes from one from to another, some of the useful enegry is always degraded to lower-quality, more dispered, less useful energy.
Slowly Degradable Pollutants: Takes decades or longer to degrade.
Social Capital: Positive force created when people with different views and values and common ground and work together to building understanding, trust, and informed shared vision of what their communities, states, nations, and the world could and should be.
Solar Capital: Energy from the sun that warms the planet and supports photosynthesis.
Sound Science: The concepts and ideas that are widely accepted by experts in a particular field of the natural or social sciences.
Sustainability (durability): Ability of the earth's various systems, including human cultural systems and economies, to survive and adapt to changing environmental conditions indefinitely.
Sustainable Yield: Highest rate at which a renewable resource can be used indefinitely without reducing its available supply
Synergistic Interaction (Synergy): Occurs when two or more processes interact so that the combined effect is greater than the sum of their separate effects.
System: Set of components that function and interact in some regular and theoretically understandable manner. (human body, a river, an economy)
Time Delay: Amount of time in a feedback loop between the input of a stimulus and the response to it.
Tragedy of the Commons: Depletion or degradation of a potentially renewable resource to which people have free and unmanaged access.