ASTR 101 Exam 3
The blue sky and the red sunsets are due to the same light/air process.
True
The sky is blue because of "air" in the sky.
True
Videos: A huge air-bag-like system has been used to safely bounce a lander onto Mars.
True
Videos: CO2 is a gas that can trap heat
True
Videos: Spinning is a very important concept in the Nebular Hypothesis
True
Videos: The centrifugal force always pulls things toward the outside of a circle
True
Videos: Water likely once flowed on Mars
True
Videos: Without any CO2 in its atmosphere, the Earth would be frozen everywhere.
True
When a ray of white light emerges from a single water drop (say of a rainbow), the red will be dispersed to the bottom and the blue light to the top.
True
For Rainbows, the sun must always be
behind you
Nitrogen and Oxygen molecules tend to wriggle a lot when they are hit by
blue light
Reflection is the
bouncing law of light
Light travels at this many miles per second
hundreds of thousands
Reading: Cryovolcanism is when volcanos spit out ______ instead of rocks.
ice
Videos: The rotational speed of a collapsing gas
increases
You see two "dots of light" in the sky. One is twinkling and one is not. The one that is twinkling is likely a
star
Reading: Saturn's rings might have formed due to ______ forces that ripped a would-be moon apart.
tidal
Reading: The great red spot on Jupiter is a vast hurricane.
true
Reading: Venus' atmosphere is almost all CO2.
true
Videos: Even in the presence of the centrifugal force, gravity still pulls masses together
true
Light at 550 nm enters water of glass and has a n=1.33. What possible value of n would be possible for red light?
1.32
Clouds are white in part due to the _____ sized water drops they are made from.
Small
Reading: We've actually seen a comet hit Jupiter.
True
Reading: With Jupiter, Romer worked on some of the first measurements of the speed of light.
True
Refraction is the
Bending law of light
At the core, sunsets are red due to dispersion
False
Clouds are white because of dispersion
False
Here at the Cal Poly track (https://www.dropbox.com/s/p8hp3k69q02wgn6/trackbow.jpg?dl=0), Bensky has proven that rainbows can only form due to water droplets way up in the atmosphere.
False
Reading: According to the fig. on p. 188 of HTRTSS, the Earth was closer to Jupiter in November.
False
Reading: All of Jupiter's surface rotates at a uniform rate.
False
Reading: Galileo was pretty certain about what he was seeing (i.e. rings and moons) when he first observed Saturn in a telescope.
False
Reading: Like the Moon, Mercury has a small iron core (relative to its size).
False
Reading: Mercury has a nice, thick atmosphere.
False
Reading: Mercury's year is longer than the Earth's year.
False
Reading: Missions to Mars have a very high success rate.
False
Reading: Saturn is the only planet in our solar system with rings
False
Reading: Saturn's moon Mimas resembles the Death Star from Star Wars
False
Reading: Saturn's moon are boring chunks of ice.
False
Reading: Saturn's tilt angle is way way different than the Earth's
False
Reading: The book mentions that Galileo saw Saturn's rings "edgewise." This would make the rings very clear to see from Earth.
False
Reading: The figure on the top of p. 91 in HTRTSS (caption="Mercury's perihelic advance....") shows Mercury's orbit always traces out the same stationary elliptical path.
False
Reading: The term 'inferior planet' is meant to mean 'insignificant.'
False
Reading: There is no evidence that water ever flowed on Mars.
False
Reading: There's no chance of finding life on Europa.
False
Reading: Venus does not show phases, like our Moon and Mercury.
False
Reading: Venus has excellent solar wind protection.
False
Reading: We are sure Venus' volcanoes are still active.
False
The sky is blue because of dispersion
False
The sky is blue because of water vapor in the sky.
False
The sky is blue due to sunlight reflecting off of the earth's vast oceans.
False
Videos: Mars has a very strong magnetic field.
False
Videos: Mars's atmosphere is thick enough that a parachute alone can be used to slow down and land on it.
False
Videos: The "Venus Equation" is "Venus=Nice."
False
Videos: Venus has a very slight greenhouse effect going on.
False
Videos: Venus is about 2x as large as the earth.
False
When an excited atom releases a photon, every outgoing photon due to deexcitation will always go in the exactly the same direction.
False
Reading: Saturn as a planet has deep, hot layers of
H and He
Videos: The original Nebula our solar system was mostly made out of
H and He
Videos: Light that is called "infrared" is most associated with
Heat
Water drops that form rainbows are relatively
Large
Reading: Venus rotates very slowly.
True
Reading: We have landed a spacecraft on Saturn's moon Titan.
True
For a primary (nice and bright) rainbow, the blue light is always on the bottom
True
Rainbows form because of dispersion of light in water drops
True
Reading: A 'transit' is when Venus moves directly between the line-of-sight between the Earth and Sun.
True
Reading: An 'inferior planet' lies between the Earth and Sun.
True
Reading: In in 1700s, a transit of Venus helped to establish the size of the solar system.
True
Reading: It appears as if Io has quite a few volcanoes.
True
Reading: Jupiter is kind of like a "vacuum cleaner" of the solar system.
True
Reading: Mars has polar ice caps.
True
Reading: Mars's day is about as long as Earth's.
True
Reading: Mars's moons are likely captured asteroids.
True
Reading: Mercury shows phases, just like our Moon.
True
Reading: Saturn would experience seasons
True
Reading: Saturn's moon Enceladus has a smooth surface indicating active geology
True
Reading: Saturn's moon Enceladus may have a salty ocean below its surface.
True
Reading: Saturn's moon Titan is larger than the planet Mercury.
True
Reading: Saturn's rings are so big that they would actually block portions of the planet we can see at a given time.
True
Reading: Saturn's rings are visible to us here on Earth
True
Reading: Saturns rings have a dark line splitting them up.
True
Reading: Sometimes a day on Mercury would have two sunrises.
True
Reading: The Fig on p. 206 of multiple orientations of Saturn would have to do with its tilt.
True
Reading: The surface of Saturn's moon Titan shows dry lake beds and river channels.
True
Reading: There are 1000mph winds on Saturn.
True
Reading: Titan has a similar "same face to your host planet" situation as our own moon.
True
Reading: Venus has a 'retrograde rotation.'
True
Reading: Venus has many, many volcanoes.
True
Reading: Venus is a very dry (i.e. devoid of liquids) planet.
True
Reading: Venus is covered with clouds, that are there all the time.
True
Reading: Venus is the 2nd brightest object in the sky after the Sun.
True
Reading: Hmmm...so it appears as if all of the excitement about life on Mars was due to a translation issue between English and Italian?
Yes
This Christmas light design (https://www.dropbox.com/s/dpgrans7wggddjk/xmas_prism.jpeg?dl=0) correctly mimics how a prism would emit a ray of ingoing light.
Yes
Videos: A "nebula" in astronomy is
dust
Reading: Mars has a very thick atmosphere.
false
Stars would twinkle, if observed from the surface of the moon.
false
Videos: In the Nebular Hypothesis, the originating heat that led to the star forming came from. (Careful with this one!)
friction
We see stars twinkle on Earth because:
of our turbulent atmosphere
This sits at the center of a simple atom
proton
Videos: You are on a stool spinning around. When you push your arms outward, you
slow down
Videos: Rocky planets formed closer to the sun do to the
solar wind
