Our Breathing Space

we can breathe. We can go out in the Sun with out getting fried. We can watch life evolving all around us.
How do we do this when we are on a lump of rock hurtling through space?
We have an atmosphere. Let's find out a little more about it...

questions:

1. how come we have air to breathe?
2. why doesn't the sun fry us?
3. why does our air stay around us instead of flying out into the vacuum of space?
4. why does the air temperature change and how come we aren't frozen like we would be if we left the Earth without a spaceship?
5. where does the ozone layer exist? what is it? how does it help us? is there a hole in it? how did that happen? is it our fault?
6. do we humans have an effect on our atmosphere?
7. what is the greenhouse effect? can we replicate that in class somehow as an experiment?
8. do you like growing tomatoes or chillis or beans?

[I'm hoping you will add todays questions to this post]

here are sone links to investigate:

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Atmosphere/overview.html

http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/sky_blue.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/earth/atmosphere.html

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/space/atmosphere.html

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Atmosphere/layers.html

http://www.cosmos4kids.com/files/solsyst_earth.html

take this quiz when you've done some research... or take it first to find out what you don't know ...

http://www.geography4kids.com/extras/quiz_atmintro/index.html

hotspots

do you know your world news?
does politics and international relations tickle your fancy?
are you a geographer?

where would you say there are political hotspots to watch out for?

today we discussed Pakistan and the state of emergency which General Musharraf has put in place... why?

any other potential hotspots in the world? places that could effect all of us if things went wrong?

AND what about ecological hotspots? perhaps the Amazon Rain forest?

OR how about environmental hotspots? like the ever growing economy of China or India using up resources?

OR countries like America and Australia who refuse to sign the Kyoto Protocol and continue to dispute global warming and the perils of carbon emissions?

please post intelligent justified opinions with references if needed.