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In the social sciences an open system is a process that exchanges material, energy, people, capital and information with its environment. French/Greek philosopher Kostas Axelos argued that seeing the "world system" as inherently open (though unified) would solve many of the problems in the social sciences, including that of praxis (the relation of knowledge to practice), so that various social ...
Environmental chemists draw on a range of concepts from chemistry and various environmental sciences to assist in their study of what is happening to a chemical species in the environment. Important general concepts from chemistry include understanding chemical reactions and equations, solutions, units, sampling, and analytical techniques. [1]
A fundamental difference exists between chemistry as it is performed in most laboratories and chemistry as it occurs in life. Laboratory processes are mostly designed such that the (closed) system goes thermodynamically downhill; i.e. the product state is of lower Gibbs free energy, yielding stable molecules that can be isolated and stored.
Monarch butterfly caterpillar on milkweed plant.. Plant, microbe, and insect chemical ecology focuses on the role of chemical cues and signals in mediating interactions with their abiotic (e.g. ability of some bacterium to reduce metals in the surrounding environment) and biotic environment (e.g. microorganisms, phytophagous insects, and pollinators).
The United States formed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 to protect human and environmental health by creating and enforcing environmental regulation. Green chemistry builds on the EPA’s goals by encouraging chemists and engineers to design chemicals, processes, and products that avoid the creation of toxins and waste.
The system is delimited by walls or boundaries, either actual or notional, across which conserved (such as matter and energy) or unconserved (such as entropy) quantities can pass into and out of the system. The space outside the thermodynamic system is known as the surroundings, a reservoir, or the environment. The properties of the walls ...
Environmental chemistry is the scientific study of the physical, chemical and biochemical properties and processes of polluting substances in the environment. Subcategories This category has the following 7 subcategories, out of 7 total.
Often the surroundings of a thermodynamic system may also be regarded as another thermodynamic system. In this view, one may consider the system and its surroundings as two systems in mutual contact, with long-range forces also linking them. The enclosure of the system is the surface of contiguity or boundary between the two systems.