The greenhouse effect can be explained easily if you understand the laws of blackbody radiation. A greenhouse gas blocks the transmission of infrared light. Given that the incoming light to Earth is sunlight with a characteristic temperature of 5800K (which peaks in the visible part of the spectrum) and the outgoing light from Earth has a characteristic temperature of about 300 K (which peaks in the infrared part of the spectrum), explain how greenhouse gases cause Earth to warm up. As part of your answer, discuss that greenhouse gases block both incoming and outgoing infrared light. Explain why these two effects don’t simply cancel each other, leading to no net temperature change.

Aheat engine running backward is called a refrigerator if its purpose is to extract heat from a cold reservoir. the same engine running backward is called a heat pump if its purpose is to exhaust warm air into the hot reservoir. heat pumps are widely used for home heating. you can think of a heat pump as a refrigerator that is cooling the already cold outdoors and, with its exhaust heat qh, warming the indoors. perhaps this seems a little silly, but consider the following. electricity can be directly used to heat a home by passing an electric current through a heating coil. this is a direct, 100% conversion of work to heat. that is, 19.0 \rm kw of electric power (generated by doing work at the rate 19.0 kj/s at the power plant) produces heat energy inside the home at a rate of 19.0 kj/s. suppose that the neighbor's home has a heat pump with a coefficient of performance of 4.00, a realistic value. note: with a refrigerator, "what you get" is heat removed. but with a heat pump, "what you get" is heat delivered. so the coefficient of performance of a heat pump is k=qh/win. an average price for electricity is about 40 mj per dollar. a furnace or heat pump will run typically 200 hours per month during the winter. what does one month's heating cost in the home with a 16.0 kw electric heater? what does one month's heating cost in the home of a neighbor who uses a heat pump to provide the same amount of heating?