General Properties of Air
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 384.
Properties of Air
Answer the following question and read the text below to check your answer.
READING TASK: Text 1
Adjectives Adverbs
Verbs and verbal phrases
Nouns and noun phrases
Give Russian equivalents of the following words and phrases. Try to memorize them.
ACTIVE VOCABULARY
Read and translate the words given below. Mind the stresses.
Find out what these abbreviations mean. Write them in words.
Example: km = kilometre
deg C, mbar, Kg/cu metre,psia, ft, bar, RH
| Oxygen Neon | Nitrogen Helium | Argon Krypton |
| Carbon Dioxide Xenon | Hydrogen |
| vapour | gravity | |
| dust | altitude | |
| microbe | lid | |
| pollen | pump | |
| scales | ||
| to pump | to squeeze | |
| to compress | to qualify | |
| to stack up | to saturate | |
| to contract | to drip out | |
| to collapse | ||
| to interrelate |
| accurate | slightly | |
| obvious | accurately | |
| obsolete |
Why can it be important to know properties of air?
Air has all sorts of properties. First of all let's consider its properties and try to get rid of some misunderstandings.
1) Air has weight.
2) Air is under pressure.
3) Air has temperature.
4) Air has a volume.
5) Air usually contains some water vapour.
Air is a mixture of gases, mainly nitrogen and oxygen. The typical composition of natural air is as follows.
| Component. | Mass% (dry air) | Volume % (dry air) |
| Oxygen | 23.14 | 20.9476 |
| Nitrogen | 75.52 | 78.084 |
| Argon | 1.288 | 0.934 |
| Carbon Dioxide | 0.048 | 0.0314 |
| Hydrogen | 0.000003 | 0.00005 |
| Neon | 0.00127 | 0.001818 |
| Helium | 0.000073 | 0.000524 |
| Krypton | 0.00033 | 0.000114 |
| Xenon | 0.000039 | 0.0000087 |
Air also contains water vapour and hard matter such as dust, microbes and pollen. These variables depend upon climatic conditions, which vary worldwide. The table therefore reflects the European average dry gas content of air, which may vary slightly in your area. To confuse things a little further, it takes almost twice the amount of energy to heat up the water vapour in wet air, than it would take to heat up an equal number of molecules of dry air.
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