The goal set for the last few class periods have been to leave the room smarter than I was upon entering; I can confidently say that mission was accomplished. A piece of information that stood out to me that we discussed last Monday is that water pollutants travel not only through water, but permutated through land masses surrounding and framing bodies of water. While the theory of this action is not new information to me, the actual affect in the ecosystem was fresh. I had never applied my knowledge of water being capable of seeping through land to problems faced in bodies of water. What raised my eyebrows was the image seen of the river that ran red from pollutants from a neighboring plant. I did not consider the permutation of pollutants prior to seeing this image, but when faced with the tangible situation up front, it is hard to imagine that there are people in this world that cannot see how draining pollutants into one body of water can affect one that shares a small wall of dirt and rocks.
Another piece of information I thought outside of class about is the Gaia hypothesis. The Gaia hypothesis is the belief that the Earth is a living organism. James Locelock begged the question, what regulates the life of Earth? Before discussing the answer I believed the answer to be boiled down to the most simplistic form, of molecular and chemical reactions that keep the Earth functioning. Lovelock stated, that “it must be life that is doing the regulating.” This stuck out to me and for the reason that Lovelock took a much more environmentalist approach than I had expected. The idea that species are interconnected, including the Earth as a species of itself. The survivability of a species is connected with its usefulness to the survival of other species. I liked that idea because it relates the chemical and physical aspects of the Earth, with an environmental sustainability outlook.
As I discuss what interested me in class discussions, I would be remiss to not mention the affect of PCB’s. September 13, marks the day I left class with the biggest jump in intelligence. Before I entered class that fateful day, I had never even heard of PCB’s. After leaving I not only know that PCB’s are pentachlorobiphenyl molecular structures, but are also: Excellent insulators, oily liquids, non-flammable, chemically stable, with high boiling points and capable of making certain technologies possible at low costs. I came out of this class as smart as I did in part of the factual chemical information, but mostly because I am now more aware of an environmental problem in the world I live in, as close as the Hudson river, than before I came to class. I enjoyed learning about PCB’s because after having left the class, I felt a bit less ignorant of my own surroundings, which I have set as my own goal for the class.
