how do polar and nonpolar molecules influence our atmosphere

Answer 1

Hi Bianca J.,

That's a VERY broad question, for many reasons.

1) Every kind of molecule that is present in the atmosphere is either non-polar (such as, carbon dioxide or methane or nitrogen or helium), somewhat polar (such as sulfur dioxide or hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFC's) or many others), or more polar (such as water, hydrogen chloride, and many others). So, where to draw the line in terms of "polar" vs. "non-polar" is your first task. You might look up tables of molecular polarity (it's measured in units of Debyes, if I recall), if you really want to get into it. Polarity arises from the geometrically summed polarities of each of the chemical bonds in a molecule. Since molecules can have a great variety of geometrical shapes, that's a huge database to consider!

2) Constituent gases may "influence" the atmosphere in about as many ways as you can think of the atmosphere as acting. Some of these are: providing climate and weather effects (temperatures, rain, maybe a few other things you can think of); supporting life by providing oxygen; supporting chemical reactions (by oxygen, or less welcomely, by reacting to make smog), blocking ultraviolet light from giving you sunburn and ultimately skin cancers, and so on. Unfortunately for your task at hand, lots of the things that specific chemicals DO in the atmosphere is specific to their chemical nature, NOT specifically to whether they are polar or not.

3) Now that I've given you the "bad news", some "good news": you can probably ace this assignment by just considering a very few common molecules which are either polar or non-polar, and noting all the effects each has on the atmosphere. I'd certainly include O2, N2, H2O, Ar, and CH4 in that list, but you may want to enlarge that list, maybe things like SO2, H2S, NH3, N2O5, and so on.

--Cheers, -- Mr. d.