concept quiz astronomy chapter 5
Suppose a photon has a frequency of 300 million hertz (300 megahertz). What is its wavelength?
1 meter
Suppose you have a 100-watt light bulb that you leave turned on for one minute. How much energy does it use?
6,000 joules
Which of the following statements is true of green grass?
It absorbs red light and reflects green light.
Suppose you had molecular oxygen (O2) chilled enough so that it was in liquid form. Which of the following best describes the phase changes that would occur as you heated the liquid oxygen to high temperature?
It would vaporize (evaporate) into a gas, then the molecules would dissociate into individual oxygen atoms, then the atoms would become increasingly ionized as you continued to raise the temperature.
Betelgeuse is the bright red star representing the left shoulder of the constellation Orion. All the following statements about Betelgeuse are true. Which one can you infer from its red color?
Its surface is cooler than the surface of the Sun
Which of the following conditions lead you to see an absorption line spectrum from a cloud of gas in interstellar space?
The cloud is cool and lies between you and a hot star.
Which of the following statements about thermal radiation is always true?
A hot object emits more radiation per unit surface area than a cool object.
Each of the following describes an "Atom 1" and an "Atom 2." In which case are the two atoms different isotopes of the same element?
Atom 1: nucleus with seven protons and eight neutrons, surrounded by seven electrons Atom 2: nucleus with seven protons and seven neutrons, surrounded by seven electrons
Consider an atom of oxygen in which the nucleus contains 8 protons and 8 neutrons. If it is doubly ionized, what is the charge of the oxygen ion and how many electrons remain in the ion?
Charge = +2; number of remaining electrons = 6
Which of the following statements about electrons is not true?
Electrons orbit the nucleus rather like planets orbiting the Sun
Suppose that Star X and Star Y both have redshifts, but Star X has a larger redshift than Star Y. What can you conclude?
Star X is moving away from us faster than Star Y.
Suppose that two stars are identical in every way; for example, same distance, same mass, same temperature, same chemical composition, and same speed relative to Earth, except that one star rotates faster than the other. Spectroscopically, how could you tell the stars apart?
The faster rotating star has wider spectral lines than the slower rotating star.
Suppose you are listening to a radio station that broadcasts at a frequency of 97 Mhz (megahertz). Which of the following statements is true?
The radio waves from the radio station are causing electrons in your radio's antenna to move up and down 97 million times each second.
All of the following statements about the Sun's corona are true. Which one explains why it is a source of X-rays?
The temperature of the corona's gas is some 1 to 2 million Kelvin.
Studying a spectrum from a star can tell us a lot. All of the following statements are true except one. Which statement is not true?
The total amount of light in the spectrum tells us the star's radius.
The planet Neptune is blue in color. How would you expect the spectrum of visible light from Neptune to be different from the visible-light spectrum of the Sun?
The two spectra would have similar shapes, except Neptune's spectrum would be missing a big chunk of the red light that is present in the Sun's spectrum.
Which of the following statements about x-rays and radio waves is not true?
X-rays travel through space faster than radio waves.
No object produces a perfect thermal radiation spectrum, but many objects produce close approximations. Which of the following would not produce a close approximation to a thermal radiation spectrum?
a hot, thin (low-density, nearly transparent) gas
if we observe one edge of a planet to be redshifted and the opposite edge to be blueshifted, what can we conclude about the planet?
the planet is rotating
Laboratory measurements show hydrogen produces a spectral line at a wavelength of 486.1 nanometers (nm). A particular star's spectrum shows the same hydrogen line at a wavelength of 486.0 nm. What can we conclude?
the star is moving toward us
gamma rays have a small
wavelength
