Vocabulary

Humans burn fossil fuels and alter the carbon cycle. Photo courtesy of London Commodities Market/Flickr. 

Carbon cycle:  movement of carbon from solid to liquid to gas and from rocks to water to air to organisms

Coal: solid fossil fuel formed from the partially decomposed remains of plant matter, primarily

Conduction: heat transfered via direct contact from an object with a higher temperature to lower

Crude oil: mixture of many different hydrocarbons

Fossil: remains from a living creature that become a rock

Fossil fuels: energy sources that form from fossils and are burned to create energy (e.g. coal, oil, natural gas)

Greenhouse effect: atmosphere acts like a "blanket" trapping in heat and keeping temperatures warm

Greenhouse gases: gases in the atmosphere that help absorb and trap heat, including carbon dioxide and water vapor

Hydrocarbons: materials that are crushed under tremendous heat and pressure. They can be soild (coal), liquid (oil) or gas (natural gas)

Natural gas: made of primarily the hydrocarbon methane gas

Nonrenewable resources: resources that are finite and, for all practical purposes, can be used up completely

Nuclear energy: energy released from the splitting of an atom

Oil: liquid fossil fuel 

Radiation: light/heat transfered between sun and Earth

Renewable resources: energy sources that are abundant and can replenish themselves

After you have completed this part of the lesson, you can check the box for this lesson piece in the course to mark it as complete

Last modified: Wednesday, 14 January 2015, 3:31 PM