Real-world example of air pollution: How Fires Impact Air Quality

Greetings!

Let’s examine a real-world event that pollutes our air: fires. Fires can include bonfires, housefires, and chemical fires in places like factories or transportation accidents. The video you will be watching today focuses specifically on wildfires. After you watch the video, you have a simulation to try from the PhET website. It will simulate how gasses move in a wildfire.

Visual

Click on the video below.

Interactive

Directions: Click here to access a simulation of how gasses move.

Open the "Gases Intro" simulation.
When you click on the link, pretend the blue particles are the smoke particles from a wildfire.
Pretend the red ones are the gasses in clean air.

“Pump” 2-3 sets of red particles into the chamber. Watch how they move around quickly. This is what air does: it fills up whatever space it's in.
Now “pump” 5-6 sets of blue particles into the chamber. Watch how quickly it takes over the chamber. Does it look like it’s choking out the “air”?
Change the temperature of the chamber (you can add “ice” at the bottom of the screen). What happens to the movement of the particles when the temperature changes?
What else could you change in this simulation to model a wildfire to impact air pollution?

Video: https://gpb.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/fires-pollution-california/pbs-newshour-video/

[CC BY 4.0] UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED | IMAGES: LICENSED AND USED ACCORDING TO TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION