Global warming and the rise in concentration of greenhouse gases are important topics in environmental chemistry and have been studied since the turn of the century (1, 2). Quite often, students are informed that methane, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases absorb infrared (IR) radiation of certain frequencies. However, students tend to have only a vague quantitative sense of the efficiency with which greenhouse gases absorb IR light. In this work, we derive a model using Beer's law and describe an experiment that illustrates the effectiveness of IR absorption by CO 2 . The experiment may be useful for environmental, physical, or instrumental chemistry courses.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.