Course Introduction
Physical Oceanography Test
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Physical Oceanography explores the fundamental physical processes governing the oceans, including the study of ocean currents, waves, tides, and the interaction between the ocean and atmosphere. The course examines topics such as heat and salt budgets, ocean circulation patterns, the dynamics of sea water movement, and how these processes influence global climate systems. Through a combination of theoretical frameworks, observational data, and numerical modeling, students gain a comprehensive understanding of the oceans role in the Earth system, methods of oceanographic measurement, and contemporary challenges in physical oceanography.
Recommended Textbook Oceanography 8th Edition by Tom S. Garrison
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Page 2
Chapter 1: The Origin of the Ocean
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Q1) Despite a multitude of names given to describe portions of the ocean, it is more accurate to call it a single dynamic world ocean.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) The composition of the Milky Way does not include:
A) stars
B) gases
C) dust
D) galaktos
Answer: D
Q3) Water in its liquid state is common in our solar system.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q4) Earth was most likely chemically homogenous when it was young.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 2: A History of Marine Science
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Q1) The orientation of charts that placed north at the top and east was on the right was done by:
A) Claudius Ptolemy
B) Eratosthenes
C) Hypatia
D) Hipparchus
Answer: A
Q2) The Norwegian Vikings began looking westward after French, Irish, and British strengthened their defenses against their raids.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q3) The Smithsonian obtained many specimens and artifacts from which groundbreaking hybrid expedition?
A) The Discovery Expedition
B) The Resolution Expedition
C) The United States Exploring Expedition
D) The Challenger Expedition
Answer: C
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Earth Structure and Plate Tectonics
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Q1) Who was responsible for the theory of continental drift?
A) Francis Bacon
B) Sir Ernest Shackleton
C) Alfred Wegener
D) Antonio Snider-Pellegrini
Answer: C
Q2) Convection occurs when heat rises which changes the density of a fluid or semisolid substance.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q3) Transform plate boundaries are not involved in the creation or destruction of crust, rather the plates just move past one another.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q4) Earthquakes are generated by two types of low frequency waves.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Page 5
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Chapter 4: Ocean Basins
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Q1) What statement is true of the surface area of oceanic ridges and their associated features?
A) They consist of slightly less area than that of all the land above sea level.
B) They consist of more area than that of all land above sea level.
C) These are almost always located in the mid-ocean.
D) These areas are largely covered by sediments.
Q2) The weight of ice atop a continent can depress the depth of the shelf break.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What was not a factor in making the mapping of the Earth's ocean more difficult?
A) The water covering our planet
B) The clouds in the atmosphere
C) Technology to measure depths
D) The gravitational pull of underwater features
Q4) What is not a general characteristic of an active margin?
A) A broad shelf
B) Faulting and volcanism
C) Varied topography
D) Little sedimentation
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Chapter 5: Ocean Sediments
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Q1) What organism is likely to be found in siliceous ooze?
A) Foraminifera
B) Coccolithophore
C) Radiolarian
D) Pteropod
Q2) If there is an abundance of foraminifera shells found in a sediment, it would be categorized as:
A) hydrogenous sediment.
B) calcareous ooze.
C) coccolithophore.
D) siliceous ooze.
Q3) What is a main source of terrigenous sediments?
A) Volcanic eruptions
B) Rivers
C) Dust and ash
D) Cosmic dust
Q4) The Pacific has a thinner layer of pelagic sediments than the Atlantic due to fewer rivers and an increase in trenches.
A)True
B)False
Page 7
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Chapter 6: Water and Ocean Structure
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Q1) Which is not a characteristic of thermoclines?
A) Tropical thermoclines are deeper than those at higher latitudes.
B) Thermoclines are not identical in form.
C) Polar waters tend to lack thermoclines.
D) Thermoclines are more abrupt in the high latitudes.
Q2) Heat and temperature are synonymous terms.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Explain how hydrogen bonds form in water. How do these bonds influence properties of water? How might the phase of water (liquid, solid, or gas) change the interaction of hydrogen bonds?
Q4) Why is ice effective at cooling drinks?
A) The sensible heat loss of water
B) The heat capacity of water
C) The latent heat of fusion
D) The diffusion of heat energy
Q5) The amount of heat energy transferred in the ocean is significantly higher than that in the atmosphere.
A)True
B)False
8
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Chapter 7: Ocean Chemistry
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Q1) What is the greatest source of oxygen in deep water?
A) The respiration from bacteria
B) The lack of large quantities of organisms
C) Chemosynthesis
D) Polar waters that have sunk from the surface
Q2) Rapid amounts of photosynthesis can create variations in the alkalinity of seawater.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Why are some tropical waters unable to sustain life?
A) There is an addition of pollutants in many of these areas.
B) There is a low level of dissolved oxygen due to temperature.
C) There is a greater amount of carbon dioxide.
D) There are more conservative components in these waters.
Q4) Salt as a compound does not truly exist in the ocean.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What is Forchhammer's principle? Give examples of the evidence which allowed Georg Forchhammer to develop this principle. How do residence times provide a foundation for this principle?
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Chapter 8: Circulation of the Atmosphere
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Q1) What is the term for a pattern of wind circulation that changes with season?
A) Land breeze
B) Monsoon
C) Doldrums
D) Atmospheric cell
Q2) What causes the solar heating of Earth to have seasonal variations?
A) The length of the Earth's rotation
B) The tilt of the Earth's axis from the sun
C) The Coriolis Effect
D) The shape of the Earth's rotation around the sun
Q3) If a ship is trying to sail from the eastern United States to Europe, what route would be the most efficient to take?
A) A southern route to take advantage of the easterlies
B) A southern route to take advantage of the westerlies
C) A northern route to take advantage of the easterlies
D) A northern route to take advantage of the westerlies
Q4) Low pressure systems form over heated landmasses in the summer while high pressure systems form over the ocean.
A)True
B)False
Page 10
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Chapter 9: Circulation of the Ocean
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Q1) What mechanism is being used to gain new information regarding deep sea circulation?
A) Acoustic tomography
B) ACDP systems
C) Electromagnetic field detectors
D) Drift cards
Q2) What is another name for undercurrents?
A) Equatorial currents
B) Transverse currents
C) Countercurrents
D) Subterranean currents
Q3) Where is density stratification the least pronounced?
A) Temperate latitudes
B) Polar latitudes
C) Tropical latitudes
D) Areas where there is upwelling
Q4) Thousands of lost shoes in the Pacific helped oceanographers refine circulation models.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 10: Waves
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Q1) What maintains a forced wave?
A) Wavelength
B) Wind
C) Disturbing force
D) Restoring force
Q2) What is an ice quake?
A) The force of that creates a wave
B) Ice that is smashed and ground together to form pressure ridges
C) The force that determines a wave's size
D) An ice shear zone where waves collide
Q3) The circulation motion of water particles at the surface continues underwater at orbits of decreasing diameter.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What type of wave is categorized as a deep-water wave?
A) Capillary wave
B) Seiche wave
C) Tsunami wave
D) Tides
Q5) How do wave trains travel? How do they interact with each other?
Page 12
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Chapter 11: Tides
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Q1) Tides can be predicted years in advance to an accuracy of approximately 3 centimeters.
A)True
B)False
Q2) The moon and Earth remain in a stable orbit due to their mutual gravitational attraction being offset by inertia.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What organism uses the tides, specifically high spring tides, to time their breeding behaviors?
A) Fiddle crabs
B) Grunion
C) Hantzchia
D) Sand crabs
Q4) There are over 140 factors that affect the generation and alteration of tides in the ocean.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What is the difference between a solar and lunar day? Which is longer? Why?
Page 13
Q6) How do various organisms utilize the tides? Can you think of examples of these?
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Chapter 12: Coasts
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Q1) What are some of the characteristics of an erosional coast? What are some key factors in the shaping of an erosional coast?
Q2) What is responsible for increasing a beach's slope?
A) The swash
B) The backwash
C) The biological activity
D) The berm crest
Q3) How have parts of Florida's coast been extended?
A) Fringing reefs
B) Mangroves
C) Barrier reefs
D) Atolls
Q4) Despite their instability, over 70 barrier islands off the United States have been commercially developed.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Global glaciation events can create variations in local sea level changes.
A)True
B)False
Q6) How do sediments move along a beach?
Page 14
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Chapter 13: Life in the Ocean
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Q1) What is a heterotroph?
A) An organism that creates its own food
B) An organism that eat other organism
C) An organism the conducts chemosynthesis
D) An organism that remains plankton for its entire life
Q2) What is a more accurate term for the feeding relationship of organisms?
A) Food chain
B) Food web
C) Trophic chains
D) Primary consumption
Q3) How are the levels of carbon dioxide linked to the photic and aphotic zones? How does this relate to the temperature of the water?
Q4) What traps light energy in primary producers?
A) Photosynthetic
B) Thylakoid
C) Chlorophyll
D) Biomass
Q5) Taxonomy is the study of biological classification schemes.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 14: Plankton, Algae, and Plants
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Q1) What is included in a quantitative analysis of plankton?
A) An estimation of plankton in a volume of water
B) An estimation of salt concentration in the water
C) The behavior of plankton
D) The amount of sunlight used by plankton
Q2) What is the most productive photosynthetic plankton apart from Cyanobacteria?
A) Dinoflagellates
B) Coccolithophores
C) Diatoms
D) Ciliates
Q3) What season does phytoplankton peak in the northern temperate zone?
A) Spring
B) Summer
C) Autumn
D) Winter
Q4) Seaweed derived materials are found in a large variety of commercial materials including adhesives, salad dressing, and ice cream.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What are seaweeds? What are the classifications of seaweeds?
Page 16
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Chapter 15: Marine Animals
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Q1) What is a relatively large classification for a group of animals that share similar architecture, level of complexity, and evolutionary history?
A) Order
B) Phylum
C) Family
D) Genus
Q2) Sharks and rays tend to be larger than bony fish.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Coral and barnacles are both arthropods due to their hard outer exoskeletons.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Brittle stars employ a unique evasive technique that involves detaching an arm if grabbed by a predator.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Marine birds usually avoid land unless they are finding food.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 16: Marine Communities
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Q1) If an environment is changed by disruption, a different climax community always establishes.
A)True
B)False
Q2) What is a community?
A) A group of organisms of the same species
B) A group of interacting organisms of different species
C) The number of different species in an area
D) The largest marine ecosystem
Q3) Why was the feeding strategy of Riftia worms such a mystery to scientists when they were first discovered?
A) These worms have no mouth.
B) These worms have no digestive tract.
C) These worms have no anus.
D) All of these choices
Q4) What is the largest marine community?
A) Intertidal community
B) Photic zone community
C) Between the photic zone and the deep bottom
D) Deep bottom communities
Page 18
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Chapter 17: Marine Resources
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Q1) Deep sediment layers have a lower proportion of natural gas and oil than the shallower layers.
A)True
B)False
Q2) What is involved in mariculture production of species? Are mariculture productions only for producing the species as food? If not, what other reasons are there for mariculture?
Q3) When did the harvesting of commercial whale species cease?
A) When the International Whaling Commission formed
B) When there were substitutes for the products produced from whales
C) When the hunting of whales became uneconomical
D) CITES- Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species
Q4) Which United States location contributes to most of the exploitable sand?
A) Texas
B) Alaska
C) Oregon
D) Florida
Q5) How is petroleum formed in the ocean? How is it found and extracted when it is deep in the ocean?
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Chapter 18: The Ocean and The Environment
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Q1) There is no commercial fishing allowed in national marine sanctuaries.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Larger species of fish are not recommended for pregnant women due to high levels of iron.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What are some of the causes and threats to humans due to? Explain the comment by National Geographic Explorer, Dr. Jared Diamond, 'the world's environmental problems will get resolved one way or another' and describe the options for resolution.
Q4) In some cases, areas where oil spills were cleaned had communities in worse shape than in areas where an oil spill was left alone.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What is the greenhouse effect? What are the gases involved in this process? What are some of the events that could happen if global warming progresses?
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