ASTR 121
What is the radius of the Moon compared to the Earth?
0.27
If the semi-major axis of planet X is 0.5 A.U's, what is its orbital period?
0.35 years
What is the distance from the Sun to the Earth in Angstroms?
1.496x10^21 Angstroms
How many Venus 'days' make up a Earth 'year'?
1.5
If the orbital period of planet X is 2 years, then its semi-major axis is
1.59 A.U.'s
How many Venus `years' makes one Earth year?
1.62
How many π's is 90 degrees?
1/2
What is the surface gravity of the Moon compared to Mercury?
1/2
And if we halve the mass of the atoms, how does the temperature change?
1/2 as much
If instead of changing the velocity, we halve the mass the atoms (change the gas to a lighter substance), how does the pressure change?
1/2 as much
If you double the size (radius) of the Earth (keeping the mass the same), how much does your weight change?
1/4 as heavy
The Moon is about 1/4 the radius of the Earth, and 1/80 its mass. What is the surface gravity of the Moon, compared to the Earth, with these values?
1/5
Mars is about 2.5 A.U.'s from the Sun. High noon on Mars is about:
1/6 as bright as Earth
A planet has an angular size of 20 degrees. If the planet moves twice the distance away, its angular size will be
10 degrees
In the same situation above, if only 1/2 the momentum is transfered, how fast is the truck moving afterwards?
10 mph
If a baseball masses 10 times more than a ping-pong ball, how much more will the ping-pong ball accelerate from the swing of the same bat?
10 times more
You sail a boat from 80E longitude to 170E longitude (along the equator), knowing the circumference of the Earth from the previous quiz, how many kilometers did you sail?
10,000 km
How many Jupiter `days' in a Jupiter `year'?
10,601
The Apollo astronauts could have performed Eatosthenes experiment on the Moon. Apollo 11 landed on 20 July 1969 in Mare tranquillitatis, on the Moon's equator. The last lunar mission, Apollo 17 on 11 Dec 1972, landed at Taurus-Littrow at latitude +20 due north of the Apollo 11 landing site. If the Apollo 17 astronauts driven their lunar buggy to the Apollo 11 site they would have traveled 606 km, What is the circumference of the Moon?
10,908 km
The typical young mountain is 2 kms tall. If they grow at 0.02 mm per year, how long to make a young mountain?
100 million years
If a 10,000 lbs truck moving at 20 mph strikes a 2,000 lbs car at rest, and all the momentum is transfered to the car, how fast will the car be moving afterwards?
100 mph
Gamma rays are about (watch the units and do some conversion work)
10^-10 mm
What is 10^-19 divided by 10^-4?
10^-15
What is 10^3.5 times 10^-4 divided by 10^2.5?
10^-3
What is 10^5 times 10^9?
10^14
If atoms are spherical with a radius of 10-8 cm, then, roughly, how many atoms in a sphere one centimeter in radius (the volume of a sphere is 4πR^3/3)
10^24 atoms
How many Moon diameters is the distance from the Earth to the Moon?
110
The typical distance from the bottom of the deepest ocean to the top of the highest mountains is
14 km
What is the angular size of a 30 km crater on the Moon as seen from the Earth?
16 arcsecs
If you double the temperature of a body, how much more energy does it radiate?
16 times as much
The parallax of a star is found to be 4 arcsecs. If the star is moved twice as far away, its parallax will be
2 arcsecs
The quantum of light is called a photon. The energy of an individual photon is given by E=hc/λ, where h is Planck's constant, c is the speed of light and λ is the wavelength of the photon (in cgs units, h is 6.62x10^-27 cm^2 gm/sec and c is 3.0x10^10cm/sec). What is the energy of a red photon of wavelength 9500 Angstroms? (watch your units, an Angstrom is 10^-8 cm)
2.1*10^-12 ergs
How long does it take seismic waves to travel from the epicenter to the other side of the Earth
21 minutes
On the winter solstice, at high noon, what is the angle of the Sun from the horizon?
22.5 degrees
Humans emit most of their energy in the near-IR (about 10 microns). How much would we have to increase your temperature so that you glowed blue?
25 times as much
How long would it take a crustal plate to move 1,000 km?
3 billion years
The crust of the Earth has a mean density of 3.3 gm/cc. If the Earth were the same density throughout its interior, what would its total mass be?
3.54x10^27 grams
A star has a declination of 60N degrees, how many degrees is it from the north celestial pole?
30
If the angle of incidence is 30 degrees, the angle of reflection is
30 degrees
Temperatures on Mercury range from 100 to 700K. At what temperature would it be room temperature?
300 K
The light gathering power of a telescope goes as the square of the diameter of the lens. If the human eye is 0.5 inches across and Galileo's telescope was 3 inches across, how much more powerful was Galileo's telescope compared to the human eye?
36 times more powerful
Mercury is 0.39 A.U.'s from the Sun. If Mercury were at 0.07 A.U.'s from the Sun, what would its greatest elongation be?
4 degrees
The alpha particle is made of 2 protons and 2 neutrons. For a proton and an alpha particle traveling at the same velocity, what is the kinetic energy of the alpha particle compared to the proton?
4 times as much
The photoelectric effect is when photons knock electrons off of atoms to make an electric current. If the energy needed to knock an electron off is 4.36x10^-12 ergs, what wavelength of light is needed?
4,555 angstroms
The time to send a radio signal to Mars at opposition is
4.3 minutes
How many planets were visible to Greek astronomers (not the Sun and Moon, only planets)?
5
A rocket on a Hohmann orbit from Earth to Venus will take:
5 months
How fast did the Apollo missions have to fly to get to the Moon in 3 days?
5,338 km/hr
What is the energy of a blue photon of 4000 Angstroms?
5.0x10^-12 ergs
Look up the mass of the Earth in grams and the radius of the Earth in centimeters (or convert from kilometers)and calculate the mean density of the Earth.
5.6 gms/cc
In the same situation above, if only 1/2 the momentum is transfered, how fast is the car moving afterwards?
50 mph
How much more energetic is a x-ray photon of wavelength 1 Angstrom to a microwave photon of wavelength 5 cms?
500 million times
You see the Moon, half illuminated on the left side, on the meridian. The time is ...
6 am
If the astronauts obeyed the 55 mi/hr speed limit on the Moon, how long was the trip from the Apollo 17 to Apollo 11 landing sites? (Hint: you need to convert the distance in kilometers above to miles)
6.8 hours
You live at 30N latitude. How far is the North Star from the zenith?
60 degrees
Consider an atmosphere is that is 50% CO2 and 50% O2, and we removed 1/2 the CO2 and put it into the ocean, what is the percentage of O2 in the new atmosphere?
67%
You live in Eugene, OR at longitude 123W and latitude 44N. On the summer solstice, at high noon, what is the angle of the Sun from the horizon? (Making a diagram of the sky, like this, marking the NCP, zenith, celestial equator and ecliptic will help you solve this)
69.5 degrees
If Mercury's rotation was locked in a 4/5 resonance, then its rotation period would be
70.3 days
Tycho achieved a new level of accuracy at the time by measuring the position of planets to an arcminute. An arcminute is 1/60 of a degree. If Tycho found that Mars moved 30 arcmins per day, how long for Mars to go around the sky (its year)?
720 days
If we half the radius of the Earth, but keeps its mass the same, how does its density change?
8 times
A star goes from 3,000K to 9,000K. How much more energy does it emit?
81 times more
The volume of a sphere is 4πR3/3. Saturn is 9.5 Earth radii. How many Earth's can fit inside of Saturn? (hint: divide the volume of Saturn using Earth radii by the volume of the Earth, where Earth radius is 1)
857
If planet A has an angular size of π/8 and planet B has an angular size of π/4, which planet is larger in physical size?
Can not determine from information given
Asteroids are thought to be a planet that did not form. If this planet had formed its orbital period would have been
Greater Mar's
Sherlock Holmes, while stating that he uses deduction, actually uses the method of induction because ...
He draws conclusions from evidence
If a planet is discovered around another star, and it has rings, its probably a
Jovian world
The planet with the shortest day is
Jupiter
Which of the following is not a great circle? a) latitude 0N parallel b) latitude 45N parallel c) longitude 0E meridian d) longitude 110E meridian e) the equator
Latitude 45N parallel
From air to oil, if the angle of incidence is 30 degrees, the angle of refraction is
Less than 30 degrees
Which of the following activities is not a form of problem solving?
Measuring your height with a ruler
To send a probe to Mercury do you need more or less velocity than to go to Mars?
More
How many times a year, at most, will Mars display retrograde motion
Once
Is the Moon inside or outside the Roche limit?
Outside
If you wanted to make a continuous map of the Earth's oceans, you would use a
Polar orbit
How does the force of gravity compare for a 150 lbs astronaut on the Earth's surface to the same astronaut in a 200 km orbit?
Pretty much the same
A human being is the size of what kind of light?
Radio
Which has more momentum, a 5,000 lbs truck moving at 20 mph or a 100 lbs cyclist moving at 50 mph?
The truck
Use Solar System Live to determine what was special for the inner 4 planets on June 28, 2000
They were in a line with the Sun
How do we know there is not a Moon-sized, invisible object orbiting near the Earth
Tides
The density of an object is its mass divided by its volume (M/V). The Earth is a sphere. If we double its mass, but keep its radius the same, how does its density change?
Twice
Given the range of temperatures on Mercury, if water existed on Mercury would we find it in all three states (solid, liquid and vapor)?
Yes
Is a light of wavelength 10^-4 meters blocked by the atmosphere?
Yes
A new planet Vulcan is discovered that is always on the opposite side of the Sun from the Earth. Which of the following is true a) its orbital period is 1 year b) its distance to the Sun is 2 A.U. c) it never transits the Sun d) a and c e) all of the above
a and c
When a meteor falls to Earth, what is its chance of hitting land?
about 1 in 4
How long from sunrise to sunset on the Moon?
about 14 days
The flatter an ellipse, the ... a) higher its eccentricity b) greater the distance between focus points c) larger the ratio of major to minor axis d) the major axis is longer than the minor axis e) all of the above
all of the above
The pressure of a gas goes as the momentum. If we double the velocity of the atoms, the pressure changes as?
doubles
A neon light produces what kind of spectrum?
emission spectrum
Where on the Earth's surface can you view all the constellations throughout the year?
equator
Again, according to Kepler's 2nd law, to make your orbit smaller you need to go
faster
Using Kepler's 3rd law, a new planet (called X) has a roughly circular orbit with a radius 1.5 times the Earth's orbital radius. Therefore, its `year' or orbital period is
greater than the Earth's
The kinetic energy of any object, large or small, is given by mv2/2. If temperature is proportional to the kinetic energy of atoms, then if we double the velocity of the atoms how much does the temperature change?
increases 4 times
If planet X had an orbital period of less than 365 days, then we know it is located
inside the Earth's orbit
Pseudo-science can be recognized because
it can not be falsified
According to Galileo, a ball rolling on a flat desert would roll forever. But we know that a ball rolling on the ground eventually comes to a stop due to friction. Where does all the energy of motion go?
it is turned into heat
Venus' greatest western elongation is 45 degrees. This means that Mercury's greatest eastern elongation must be ...
less than 45 degrees
Circumpolar stars are those stars which never set below the horizon due to their close angular distance to the north celestial pole. As you travel north, are there fewer or more circumpolar stars?
more
According to Kepler's 2nd law, a satellite in a highly eccentric orbit will move the fastest at
perihelion
The most important result from deterministic chaos is
simple rules can produce considerable complexity
If you see the Moon in early afternoon, then it is ...
waxing
