Download Spring `03 final exam study guide

Astro final Spring 2003
The final will cover: prologue through chapter 4, chapters 6, 7,10,11,12, and a little14.
The final exam will count 200 points and it will count about 2 tests. If you improve on
the final relative to previous performances, it will count as more than two tests, perhaps
as three.
Multiple choice from all chapters as well as past tests and quizzes will be a pretty good
guide to the final.
You may be asked to define some of the following vocabulary terms.
minute of arc
Occam’s razor
retrograde motion
second of arc
Parallax
theory
hypothesis
epicycle
heliocentric model
ellipse
stellar parallax
Astronomical
unit(AU)
Galilean moons
mass
inertia
full (phase)
gibbous (phase)
crescent (phase)
acceleration
velocity
wavelength
frequency
photon
electromagnetic
spectrum
rotation
solar (lunar) eclipse umbra
revolution
volatile
penumbra
corona
perigee
apogee
binary star
Doppler effect
spectroscope
asteroid
escape velocity
ion
stellar wind
asteroid belt
Kuiper belt
meteor
meteoroid
meteorite
sunspot
luminosity
pressure
hydrostatic equilibrium
conduction
convection
radiation
apparent magnitude main sequence
parsec
absolute magnitude white dwarf+
electron degeneracy+
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
planetary nebula+
Chandrasekhar limit+
Supernova+
The following questions might also be asked:
1. What makes the constellations of the zodiac special?
2. Name the planets that are never seen very far from the Sun in the sky.
3. Why was Copernicus forced to use epicycles in his model?
4. Which criterion for a good model did Kepler’s model satisfy better than previous
ones had?
5. The Earth is closer to the Sun in January than it is in July. During which of these
two months is it moving faster?
6. Which of Venus’s phases could not be explained by the Ptolemaic model?
7. Why, strictly speaking, are theories never “proven”?
8. Be able to distinguish between mass and volume, mass and weight.
9. Distinguish between acceleration and speed.
10. You are in a car going around a curve. Describe the accelerations that take place
11. What are the three primary controls of your car that are directly connected with
acceleration?
12. The period of a wave is defined as the amount of time required for the wave to
complete one cycle. What, then, is the relationship between the period and the
frequency of a wave?
13. What are Kirchhoff’s laws?
14. What are Bohr’s rules?
15. Suppose each of two planets were found to have a natural satellite at the same
distance from the planets’ centers. The period of the satellite of planet X, though,
is greater than that of the satellite of planet Y. Which planet must have the greater
mass? Explain your reasoning.
16. Which planets have rings?
17. If you were classifying the planets by size only, you might make three classes.
What planets would be in each class?
18. Which would a small planet be more likely to have hydrogen or carbon dioxide in
its atmosphere? Explain.
19. How does the speed of a gas molecule at Earth’s escape velocity (say 11 km/sec)
compare to the speed of a commercial airliner (500 miles per hour = 800
km/hour)? How many times faster is it?
20. What is a blink comparator and for what is it used?
21. Is it probable that Pluto is a former moon of Neptune? Why or why not?
22. Draw a sketch of a comet, labeling its coma, nucleus, and tail.
23. Please distinguish among meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites.
24. Describe the nature and types of cometary tails: How many are there and which
way do they point? A sketch might be appropriate.
25. Why is the dust tail of a comet curved and the ion tail straight?
26. Why are asteroids not thought to be remnants of an exploded planet?
27. Enumerate (list) and briefly describe the main processes of heat transfer. Which
ones are operating for the Sun?
28. Which is the core of the Sun, a solid, liquid, gas, or plasma (hot gas with the
electrons stripped from the atoms)? Please explain.
29. Explain, at a molecular level, how a gas exerts pressure on the walls of its
container.
30. Describe how the Sun’s equilibrium is maintained?
31. How can the size of a (non-eclipsing binary) star be determined?
32. Name and describe the basic method used to measure the distance to nearby stars.
33. It would be good to have a basic understanding of luminosity classes and how
one can determine long distances using spectroscopic parallax.
34. Why are Cepheid variables key factors in determining distances? What are the
sources of uncertainty using Cepheid variables in this way?
35. What is the single most important property of a star that determines the steps it
goes through after ending its main sequence life?
36. Explain how a white dwarf in a binary system can undergo a supernova phase+
37. About how large will the Sun become when it reaches the red giant stage?+
+ = You may be able to answer these on the basis of things already known, from earlier
exposure, or by figuring things out. But the material is largely or entirely from chapter
14.