GEK1521 / PC1326 Tutorial 4 ( Lecture 12-14: Water, Gravitational Biology )

1. Which of the following gases do you expect to have the highest solubility in water? a) b) c) d) e) CO2 CH4 H2 O2 N2

2. A cup of tea contains about 100ml of water. If all the water turns into sweat and evaporates, how much heat energy does it take away? 3. If a person weighs 100 kg and its assumed to be pure water, what is the body temperature decrease caused by the sweat evaporation in the above question?

4. Water drawn through trees by transpiration evaporates into the air above forests and generates updrafts of lighter weight moist air! Glider pilots know that they can gain lift from these currents by flying above forests. Consider that a molecule of water displaces a molecule of nitrogen or oxygen gas. Why then is air lighter when we add moisture to it?

5. For a 130 kg person, how many liters of water has to be displaced to make him float on water?

6. Detergent soaps reduce the surface tension of water, therefore making water wetter and better able to penetrate dirt on dishes, etc. A water strider is an insect that skates across the surface of fresh water streams and ponds to locate food. Disregarding any chemical reactions that might be toxic to the insect, what would happen to the water strider if detergent was added to the surface of that stream or pond?

7. If you place the corner of a paper towel into a droplet of water the water moves across the paper towel. Which of the following would explain the movement of the water? a) b) c) d) Surface tension. Cohesion. Adhesion. Both cohesion and adhesion.

8. A coastal climate is moderated primarily by which of the following properties of water? a) b) c) d) Water is the universal solvent. Water is cohesive and adhesive. Water resists changes of temperature. Water has a high surface tension.

9. Fibrous materials such as cell walls can act like wicks to draw water by capillarity from nearby xylem. This capillary action ensures that cell wall surfaces that are directly exposed to the air, such as those in leaf mesophyll, remain wetted and do not dry out. Because the cell wall capillaries have a tiny radius, about 108 m, very large physical forces can be generated in the water just below the evaporative surfaces of cell walls. Assume the capillary rise can be estimated be the following equation. How tall will a tree grow?

10. Weight, weightlessness:

Womans mass m = 65 kg Lift accelerates briefly at 0.2g downwards. i) What is her apparent weight during acceleration? ii) What does the scale read during acceleration? iii) What does the scale read when the lift descends at constant speed?

11. A spaceship is circling around earth like a satellite. What is the apparent weight of an astronaut in the spaceship? a) b) c) d) e) Same as on Earth. Twice as on Earth. Zero. It depends on how far the spaceship is from Earth. Weight has no definition in this case.

12. Suppose we are launching a ring-shaped space city with 1 km radius. To make the residents comfortable, the space city will rotate so that the centrifugal force provides artificial gravity. To simulate the gravity on Earth surface, how fast should it rotate? (What is the period of rotation?)

13. If we grow a plant on the space city above, the root of the plant will grow towards: a) b) c) d) e) Earth. A random direction. The center of the ring. The outside of the ring. The sun.

14. Suppose an ant can lift 50 times of its body weight, and this is limited by the max stress its legs can tolerate. If the ant gets mutated and becomes 150 times bigger (about the same size as us), now how many times of its body weight can it lift?

15. Some people get motion sickness when playing video games, especially 3D shooters. Which one of the following is most likely the cause of it? a) b) c) d) e) The dazzling visual effects make our eyes tired. The pounding sound effects make the hearing nerves uncomfortable. The visual effects suggest motions we have never experienced in real life before. The eyes see no motion but the vestibular system feels motion. The visual effects suggest motions but the vestibular system feels no motion.