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Severe Smog in Beijing Prompts Smog Research

posted by janrinok on Sunday March 02 2014, @11:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the if-you-could-see-me-now dept.

hankwang writes:

"For the past couple of days, China's capital has been suffering under severe smog, leaving the sun and skyscrapers barely visible. The highest concentration of small airborne particles (PM2.5) was 0.50 mg per cubic meter, a factor 20 above the Word Health Organization's safe limit. Scientists went as far as comparing this to a nuclear winter. The worst seems to be over for now: today, the monitors are reading 0.180 mg/m3, only a factor 7 above the WHO limit.

The Chinese smog seems to behave differently from the smog in Europe and the US. Existing scientific models developed in the West do not work well. To improve the models and understanding, plans are underway to build a 600 cubic-meter (that's 21,000 cubic ft or 160,000 US gallon) transparent dome as a smog chamber."

[NOTE TO EDITOR: I can't get slashcode to display the mu symbol, so I converted to milligrams] [Ed's Note: Thankyou - but what is it in firkins?]

 
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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by hankwang on Monday March 03 2014, @03:10AM

    by hankwang (100) on Monday March 03 2014, @03:10AM (#9932) Homepage

    I applaud the effort of the editor to include all units, in the submission.

    Article submitter here. That was me; I actually considered to include UK gallons as well. The editor did not change anything in the submission. I had hoped that they would insert the mu character but instead they left my entire "note to the editor" in.

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  • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday March 03 2014, @05:25AM

    by janrinok (52) on Monday March 03 2014, @05:25AM (#9958) Journal

    I was genuine in my thanks for your efforts. I left your note in so that I could add my poor attempt at humour (n.b. English spelling - I am a Brit), but primarily as a subtle hint to others that these sort of things certainly do make the editor's job easier and also help the reader.

    --
    It's always my fault...

    • (Score: 1) by ls671 on Monday March 03 2014, @06:05AM

      by ls671 (891) on Monday March 03 2014, @06:05AM (#9967) Homepage

      "so that I could add my poor attempt at humour"

      Well, not that bad, it made me search for "frickin" ;-)

      Note that my research concluded than a firkin equals 40.91 liters. Are you mixing up mass and volume units?

      Given that it is hard to determine the density of those pollution particles, it would be hard to know how much would fit in a beer barrel. Are we allowed to compress them to fit more into the barrel? Even then, we would need more information on the composition of the particles, which I assume may vary, to fully answer your question.

      Cheers,

      P.S. You must have been sad when "The Firkin Brewery" chain of pubs shut down in the United Kingdom.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firkin_Brewery [wikipedia.org]

      --
      Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.