Overview

# Beer-Lambert Law and Earth’s Atmosphere

As an undergraduate Chemistry teacher, you can use this set of computer-based tools to teach the Beer-Lambert Law and its application in atmospheric radiation absorption studies.

This lesson plan will enable students to learn about the Beer-Lambert Law and understand its application for studying the molar absorptivity of greenhouse gases.

Thus, the use of this lesson plan allows you to integrate the teaching of a climate science topic with a core topic in Chemistry.

Grade Level: Undergraduate
Discipline: Chemistry
Topics: Beer-Lambert Law, Molar Absorptivity, Absorbance of Incident Light, Transmittance of Incident Light, Intensity of Transmitted Light, Greenhouse Gases, Molar Absorption Coefficient, Molar Extinction Coefficient
Climate Topic: Climate and the atmosphere, The Greenhouse Gas Effect
Location: Global
Languages: English
Access: Online (some material may be downloaded for offline use)
Duration: 50-60 min

Learning outcomes

The tools in this lesson plan will enable students to:

• derive the expression for Beer-Lambert Law
• define molar absorptivity/molar absorption coefficient/molar extinction coefficient of a medium
• calculate the effect of concentration of a chemical species and path length on the intensity of transmitted light
• understand the effect of increasing concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases on absorbance of incident sunlight