Finite and renewable resources, sustainable development, making water safe to drink, the water analysis and purification practical, and treating waste water.
What you will learn
- Sort resources into finite and renewable
- Put the steps of water treatment in order
- Find the mass of dissolved solids per dm³ from evaporation results
- Describe how sewage is treated
Using resources sustainably
Humans use the Earth's resources for warmth, shelter, food and transport.
Natural resources, helped by agriculture, give food, timber, clothing and fuels; chemistry adds or replaces them with synthetic products.
- Finite: a fixed amount, used faster than it forms (crude oil, natural gas, coal, metal ores, limestone).
- Renewable: replaced as fast as it is used (timber from managed forests, cotton, wool).
- Sustainable development meets the needs of people today without stopping future generations from meeting theirs.
Natural rubber, like timber, is renewable. Chemists make processes more sustainable by using catalysts so reactions run at lower temperatures and use less energy, by choosing reactions with a high atom economy, and by using renewable raw materials and recycling.
The rest of this lesson and its 10 practice questions are locked.
In this lesson
- Using resources sustainably
- Potable water
- Required practical: analysing and purifying water
- Try it: Your turn with the evaporation results
10 practice questions, marked as you go; about 25 minutes in all.
Key terms
Sustainable development, Potable, Fresh water, Sea water, Desalination, Waste water, Sludge, Effluent
In this unit: The Earth's atmosphere
The air now and how it formed, greenhouse gases and climate change, carbon footprints and the pollutants from burning fuels. Its later lessons on water, life cycles, materials and the Haber process stay here too; Using resources teaches them in full.