The tool below drills those stories.
WeSolve+ reads the whole document and writes the questions for you
Upload your PDF, photograph your notebook, or point the camera. WeSolve+ writes questions from that material, explains why each answer is right, reads the chapter back to you as a podcast, and remembers every item you missed until you own it.
The tool below is a small browser-only tool and it is not WeSolve+: paste a few lines and text rules turn them into cards on the spot. The real app, the one that uses AI, is behind the link above.
Unit 7 pollutant stories, from your own notes
This is a browser-only tool, and that is all it isIt splits the text you paste by rule, and nothing else. WeSolve+ is a different thing entirely: it reads your whole PDF with AI, writes the reasoning behind every question, speaks the chapter back to you, and remembers what you missed so it can return it. Try the real app now, free!
Cards come out of the rules applied to your paste. The tool never saw the lecture, so it can only be as complete as the text you gave it.
Primary or secondary: sort by where it was made
Primary pollutants leave the source as themselves: carbon monoxide from incomplete combustion, sulfur dioxide from coal, most particulates, nitrogen oxides born in hot engines. Secondary pollutants are manufactured in the atmosphere, tropospheric ozone above all, cooked from nitrogen oxides and volatile organics by sunlight. The classification is the exam's first question because the fix differs: cut the ingredient, not the product.
Photochemical smog is a recipe with three ingredients
Smog wants morning traffic for nitrogen oxides and volatile organics, strong sunlight to run the photochemistry, and still air to hold the batch, which is why sunny basin cities suffer worst. Ozone is its signature product, an oxidant that inflames lungs and damages crops. Scenario questions describe a city and ask why its smog peaks; answer with the recipe and the geography that traps it.
Acid rain is pollution with a commute
Tall stacks solved local air by exporting it: sulfur and nitrogen oxides ride weather systems, oxidise en route, and fall days later as acid rain, sterilising poorly buffered lakes, leaching soil aluminium, etching stone. The regional mismatch, emitters upwind, damage downwind, is the tested politics, and limestone buffering explains why identical deposition wounds one watershed and spares another.
Inversions and indoor air: the trap and the overlooked room
A thermal inversion parks warm air over cool, shutting the vertical mixing that normally dilutes emissions; valley cities under winter highs collect their own exhaust for days. Indoors, the list inverts intuition: radon seeping from bedrock ranks second among lung cancer causes, carbon monoxide kills quietly, and volatile organics off gas from furnishings. Both topics are diagnosis questions: name the trap, name the source.
Controls are matched to pollutants, and the match is graded
Scrubbers wash sulfur dioxide out of stack gas; electrostatic precipitators catch particulates; catalytic converters rework tailpipe carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and unburned fuel; vapour recovery captures volatiles at the pump. Above the devices sit the laws, emissions standards and permit markets, whose sulfur trading program is the standard success case. Free response wants device paired to pollutant, then the policy layer named.
What to photograph for Atmospheric Pollution
Your pollutant tables and control matches. Related: Unit 6, photo to quiz and pricing.
Sources used on this page
- College Board, AP Environmental Science
- Air pollution
- Smog
- Acid rain
- Inversion (meteorology)
- Active recall
- Spaced repetition
- Testing effect
- Forgetting curve
- Generation effect
- Judgment of learning
- Metacognition
- Desirable difficulty
- Distributed practice
- Formative assessment
- Flashcard
- Cloze test
- Multiple choice
- Test (assessment)
- Educational assessment
- Advanced Placement
- Curriculum
- Study skills
- Study guide
- Note-taking
- Overlearning
- Instructional scaffolding
- Item analysis
- Mastery learning
| Pollutant | Main source | Matched control |
|---|---|---|
| Sulfur dioxide | Coal combustion | Scrubbers, allowance trading |
| Nitrogen oxides | Hot engines, stacks | Catalytic converters |
| Carbon monoxide | Incomplete combustion | Converters, ventilation indoors |
| Particulates | Combustion, dust | Electrostatic precipitators |
| Tropospheric ozone | Cooked from NOx and VOCs | Cut the ingredients |
| Radon | Bedrock into basements | Test and ventilate |
What does AP Environmental Science Unit 7 cover?
Air pollution: primary and secondary pollutants, photochemical smog, acid deposition, thermal inversions, indoor air and control technologies.
What is the difference between primary and secondary pollutants?
Primary leave the source as themselves; secondary are made in the atmosphere, tropospheric ozone the model case.
Why do sunny basin cities get the worst smog?
The recipe needs traffic emissions, strong sunlight and stagnant air; a basin under an inversion supplies the stillness that holds the batch.
Why does acid rain damage lakes far from any smokestack?
Tall stacks export the oxides downwind, where they oxidise and fall; poorly buffered watersheds take the damage their emitters never see.
Which control matches which pollutant?
Scrubbers for sulfur dioxide, precipitators for particulates, catalytic converters for tailpipe gases, ingredient cuts for ozone.
Can I build questions from my own Unit 7 notes?
Yes. Photograph the pages or upload the PDF and the questions stay inside this unit rather than sampling the whole course.
Last updated: 2026-08-15