RockOn #1 2019
Chemists recognize many different elements, such as gold, or oxygen, or carbon, or iron. Suppose you got some iron, and started splitting it into smaller pieces. The smallest piece that would still be called "iron" would be:
An atom
You find an atom, and you want to learn what element it is (its a fundamental type). If you are efficient, you first should:
Count the number of protons contained in the nucleus of the atom
Your job depends on you finding the best available information on a particular technical topic. Where should you concentrate your search if you want to do it right and keep your job?
Find and study refereed scientific articles in learned journals
Scientists receive government funding primarily because:
They help humans do useful things
A scientist gains knowledge about how the world works, and uses that information to successfully predict what will happen in an experiment. This proves that the scientist's knowledge is: A) Close; no one really knows what is going on, but people sort of know. B) Cheating. C) Lucky; no one knows what is going on, so only lucky people get things right. D) True; you can't get it right unless you know what is going on. E) One or more of True, lucky, or close to being true (or cheating), but we can't tell which.
one or more of True, lucky, or close to being true for cheating but we can't tell which
When scientists agree that a particular scientific theory is a good one, and the scientists use that theory to help make new things, cure diseases, etc., that "agreement" came about because:
A number of different experiments by different people all had outcomes that were well-predicted by the theory
The peer review process, in which scientists submit write ups of their ideas and experiments to a set of colleagues who judge how good the ideas are before the ideas can be published, is:
A useful and important, mechanism of quality-control for the scientific literature
Human population continues to grow. Looking at many of the things we use on earth (farmland and land for wood and other things, fish in the sea, etc.)
Our use is large but not everything we are approaching use of half of all that is available
Geology departments are seeing a lot of recruiters recently, because geology is an in-demand major. Which of the following is NOT a job that geologists commonly end up doing?
Packaging substandard mortgages into "securities" and trying to sell them to unsuspecting people
Nuclei of atoms are made up of:
Protons, usually with neutrons added
National Parks are:
Regions containing key biological, geological or cultural resources that have been set aside for the enjoyment of the present generation and future generations
Geologists get to play with chemistry, physics, biology... and history! And what a history you will meet as you work your way through the course. Starting at the beginning, the textbook provides the scientifically accepted start of the story... and promises that you'll get to explore some of the evidence for that scientific view, later in the semester. Meanwhile, which is more nearly correct of the scientifically accepted view?
The Earth formed from the falling together of older materials, about 4.6 billion years ago.
One of the big problems faced by National Parks is that:
They must allow people to enjoy things today, and preserve those things for the future, but achieving both of these is not easy
The great scientist Alfred Wegener proposed that continents have moved, while other scientists such as T.C. Chamberlin argued against Wegener. Wegener's ideas eventually won, and are now widely accepted, because:
Wegener's idea did a better job of predicting the results of new observations and experiments
If you could drill a hole straight to the center of the Earth, and keep track of what the hole is going through, you would find:
You would go through one sort of material, and then a different, denser material, and then a still-different, still-denser material, because the planet is made of concentric layers, sort of like an onion