Heating with the Greenhouse Effect

Introduction

Have you ever thought about where the vegetables you eat are coming from when it is too cold outside to grow them? They might have been shipped from a different country to your home town, or they may have been grown locally in a greenhouse. Greenhouses are huge house-like structures that are usually made mostly of glass. How can they protect plants from the cold? In this activity, you will find out and create some extra heat from the sun.

Background

Plants cannot grow everywhere. Their environment has to provide the right conditions for them to survive. Specifically, plants need water, air, sunlight, and suitable temperatures. In winter months, cold temperatures are often a limiting factor for plant growth. This is why already the Romans created artificial environments so that they could grow their vegetables all year. Today many vegetables, especially tomatoes, are grown in greenhouses, large structures made of glass or plastic that cover the plants inside.

Greenhouses work based on a physical principle called "the greenhouse effect." In a greenhouse, sunlight, which is made up of different wavelengths, some of which are in the visible and infrared spectrum, shines through the transparent glass or plastic roof and walls. Only the light in the visible spectrum can penetrate into the greenhouse, whereas infrared light, which is also known as heat radiation, is blocked by the glass or plastic. Inside the greenhouse, the visible light is absorbed by the plants and soil and is converted into heat. The heat is then emitted by the plants and soil in form of infrared radiation. Because the heat radiation is blocked by the glass, it cannot escape, and the temperatures inside the greenhouse will steadily increase. Even in the winter, temperatures in a greenhouse can be warm enough for vegetables to grow. Want to see for yourself? Take a thermometer and explore the greenhouse effect in this activity! How high do the temperatures get in your "greenhouse"?

Materials

Preparation

Procedure

Observations and Results

As long as both thermometers are exposed to the same conditions, they should show the same temperature. There may be some slight variations between different thermometers, but they should not differ more than 1-2 degrees. Once you place one thermometer inside the glass jar, you place it in an artificial environment. Inside the jar, the heat that is generated from the energy of the sunlight is not able to escape, as the glass does not allow heat radiation to pass through. Because the air inside the jar is trapped, there is also no air flow possible. This means that the warm air cannot mix with colder air to cool it down. As a result, the temperatures inside the glass jar should have gotten higher and higher over time. The actual temperature depends on how sunny it was at your workplace.

After 20 minutes, you should have seen that the temperature inside the glass jar was significantly higher than the temperature outside the jar. Although the temperature also increases outside the jar, the thermal energy generated by the sunlight can escape through the air when not trapped. Also, cool air from the surroundings can mix with the hotter air around the thermometer, which makes the temperature outside the jar rise less. Finally, you might have noticed that the temperatures inside the glass jar can get pretty high. To avoid this in a real glasshouse, temperatures are often controlled by means of ventilation or even cooling.

Cleanup

More to Explore

• What is the greenhouse effect?, from NASA Climate Kids
• How does a greenhouse work?, from science with bobert at Youtube
• Putting the 'Green' into Greenhouses, from Scientific American
• US greenhouse production statistics, from Produce Grower
• Science Activity for All Ages!, from Science Buddies

Credits