What Energy Source Tends To Wear Up The Land

How does air temperature over landmasses and adjacent bodies of water change between day and night?

You've asked a rather interesting (IMHO) question. This is a fun one.

Air over land tends to be drier (containing less water vapor) than air over water. Completely dry air has a very low specific heat. Specific heat is the amount of energy (in Joules) it takes to change the temperature of 1kg of the object in question 1 degree C (or K). The specific heat of dry air is usually ~1.0 kJ/kg K, but this can change with the temperature. There is a table of values for temperatures on this website: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-properties-d_156.html

The specific heat of water is ~4.186 kJ/kg K, which is MUCH higher than that of dry air. Again, there's a website that shows what the specific heat of water is at various temperatures: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-thermal-properties-d_162.html

What all of this means, in simple terms, is that it takes more energy to change the temperature of water than it does of dry air. The only major source of heat the air has is the Sun. So, if it's a sunny day, it's a safe assumption that the air over the land is going to heat up a lot more quickly than the air over the water. Because of this, the hotter air is going to be less dense than the colder air, and so the air from the water is going to begin to diffuse toward the land, creating what is commonly known as a "sea breeze" or "lake breeze".

However, at night, when the sun goes down, the heating element for the air has been removed. The neat thing about specific heat/heat capacity is that it shows how well objects retain heat as well. Objects with a higher specific heat retain heat better than those with lower specific heats. Thus, the air over land will cool much faster than the air over the water, because the water will retain its heat from the daytime much better than the land will. Thus, the warmer, less dense air is now over the water, and the cooler air from the land will begin to move out over the water, and will create what is called a "land breeze".

There is an excellent webpage devoted to this from the University of Wisconsin, complete with photos and satellite animations here: http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/wxwise/seabrz.html

Imagine yourself standing in the middle of a frozen lake. The ice is so smooth that it is frictionless.?

In order for you to move forward, you need to apply a backword force on the surface. If the ice was frictionless, you couldn't do that.

You could, however, throw something (your boots, clothing, expensive watch) away from the shore, causing you to move in the opposite direction from the thrown object.

Newton's third law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

This law is exemplified by what happens if we step off a boat onto the bank of a lake: as we move in the direction of the shore, the boat tends to move in the opposite direction (leaving us facedown in the water, if we aren't careful!).

Why don't B-52 bombers ever flare for landing?

They built the bomber with the bomb bay over the C of G to prevent huge changes in the C of G when the bombs were dropped, making the B-52 a more stable bombing platform. This led to the B-52's quad landing gear. Because this gear configuration would not allow the aircraft the rotate, they built the wings at a high angle of incidence. In fact, even during takeoff, the rear wheels often lift off first.

Flaring has nothing to do with aircraft size, it's all about aircraft design. For example the C-17 doesn't flare for landing, because it was designed to use a power push instead of a flare, not because it's big.

EDIT: Stop getting caught up in what other airplanes do. The B-52 is designed to fly that way. Just because the fuselage stays level during the landing doesn't mean that the pilots are landing hard on purpose ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JxFMIGRN... ) It just has a high angle of incidence, meaning that the wings are attached to the fuselage at a higher angle. The aircraft is designed so that it doesn't need to rotate on takeoff (the wings are already angled up), and therefore the same applies to the landing, it doesn't need to flare.

Are convective clouds more likely to form over snow covered ground or bare ground?

Over bare ground only.Because, snow is a good reflector of heat and a fairly good radiator of long wave radiations.consequently,the temperature over a snow surface tends to sink to very low levels.The air over the snow covered surface will also be colder and in such a condition ,the charge separation (which is responsible for the formation of convective clouds) will be very weak.Hence, the chances of the formation of convective clouds over snow covered ground will be less than that over the bare ground.