Physical Science: Astronomy
Final Exam
Course Introduction
This course offers a comprehensive introduction to the fundamental principles of astronomy, focusing on the scientific methods used to explore the universe beyond our planet. Students will examine the structure and evolution of stars, galaxies, and the cosmos, as well as the origins and dynamics of the solar system. The course emphasizes the physical laws gravity, electromagnetic radiation, and nuclear processes that govern celestial phenomena. Through observations, simulations, and critical analysis, students will gain an appreciation for the scale of the universe and the ongoing quest to understand its mysteries.
Recommended Textbook
Astronomy Preliminary Edition by Adam Frank
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Page 2
Chapter 1: Getting Started: Science, astronomy, and Being Human
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Sample Questions
Q1) Arrange the following objects in order of increasing size:
A) planet, star, galaxy, galaxy cluster, supercluster.
B) planet, galaxy, star, supercluster, galaxy cluster.
C) star, planet, galaxy, galaxy cluster, supercluster.
D) planet, star, supercluster, galaxy cluster, galaxy.
Answer: A
Q2) Which of the following is closest to the diameter of our Galaxy?
A) 10<sup>21</sup> m
B) 10<sup>24</sup> m
C) 10<sup>27</sup> m
D) 10<sup>35</sup> m
Answer: A
Q3) Which of the following was a way in which prehistoric cultures used astronomy?
A) as a mathematical calculating machine
B) for navigation
C) for measuring distances
D) as hunting guides
Answer: B
Q4) Identify the base,coefficient,and exponent in the number 4.07 × 10 .
Answer: The base is 10,the coefficient is 4.07,and the exponent is 6.
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Chapter 2: A Universe Made, a Universe Discovered
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is a solar day? Why is it longer than a sidereal day?
Answer: A solar day is the time between consecutive crossings of the same celestial meridian by the Sun.It is longer than a sidereal day because Earth moves around its orbit each day.
Q2) A resident of the Southern Hemisphere observes the Sun's position at noon every day over the course of a year.The Sun will be highest in the sky on:
A) March 21.
B) June 21.
C) September 21.
D) December 21.
Answer: D
Q3) The astronomer who used the geocentric model to make accurate predictions of planetary positions was:
A) Herschel.
B) Ptolemy.
C) Hipparchus.
D) Tycho Brahe.
Answer: B
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4
Chapter 3: A Universe of Universal Laws
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Sample Questions
Q1) Two asteroids,A and B,orbit the Sun.Asteroid A follows a circular orbit with a radius of 6 AU.
Asteroid B follows an elliptical orbit with a perihelion distance of 4 AU and an aphelion distance of 8 AU.
How do their orbital periods compare to each other?
A) Asteroid B has about half the period of asteroid A.
B) Asteroid B has about 1.5 times the period of asteroid A.
C) Asteroid B has about twice the period of asteroid A.
D) The asteroids have identical periods.
Answer: D
Q2) A child's top begins to spin.As it spins,a battery shrinks the top.How does the rate at which the top spins change as it shrinks? What physical principle determines this?
Answer: The top spins faster after it shrinks,thanks to the conservation of angular momentum.
Q3) If you kick a concrete wall hard,your foot will hurt.Explain this in terms of Newton's laws of motion.
Answer: For every force,there is an equal and opposite reaction force: the force exerted by your kick on the wall is also exerted on your foot.
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Chapter 4: A Universe of Universal Laws
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Sample Questions
Q1) An astronomer using a refracting telescope sees an image of two gas clouds with identical shapes but displaced slightly from each other.One is composed of blue light and the other red light.The most likely explanation is:
A) the Doppler effect.
B) chromatic aberration.
C) dust absorption.
D) interstellar scattering.
Q2) An astronomer takes a spectrum of a nearby star.She finds that its absorption lines all appear at shorter wavelengths than expected from laboratory measurements.She should conclude that the star is:
A) moving toward her.
B) composed of elements not seen on Earth.
C) hotter than her laboratory analogs.
D) obscured by dust.
Q3) Light is:
A) a wave in the electromagnetic field.
B) a particle.
C) both a particle and a wave.
D) neither particle nor wave.
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Page 6
Chapter 5: The Architecture and Birth of Planetary Systems
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Q1) Why do the compositions of planets in our Solar System depend on distance from the Sun?
Q2) An interstellar cloud of gas and dust with a radius of 10 AU rotates slowly,with its outer edge traveling at 10 ³ km/s.How fast is the outer edge of the cloud rotating after it contracts to 100 AU?
A) 10<sup>-1</sup> km/s
B) 1 km/s
C) 100 km/s
D) 10<sup>3</sup> km/s
Q3) How did the first exoplanets to be discovered differ from those in our Solar System?
Q4) Meteoroids can come from:
A) comets.
B) the Moon
C) Mars.
D) all of the above.
Q5) Most of the asteroids in the asteroid belt are S-type.What does this tell us about their history?
Q6) What is a dwarf planet?
Q7) How do terrestrial planets form?
Page 7
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Chapter 6: Home Base: Earth and Moon
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Sample Questions
Q1) A planet that experiences an increase in its atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration will also likely experience a(n):
A) increase in the thickness of its polar ice caps.
B) decrease in its surface temperature.
C) increase in its magnetic field.
D) decrease in the density of elements lighter than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Q2) Which of the following is essential for a magnetic dynamo?
A) flows of charged particles
B) a solid bar magnet
C) rapid variations in the rotation rate
D) conduction
Q3) Which of the following sequences correctly characterizes the composition of Earth's layers,from its center to its surface?
A) solid iron, molten iron, solid nickel, granite
B) silicate rocks, molten iron, silicate rocks
C) molten iron, silicate rocks, granite
D) solid iron, molten iron, silicate rocks
Q4) What is responsible for heating the stratosphere? What about the ionosphere?
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Chapter 7: Sibling Worlds: Mercury, Venus, and Mars
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Q1) Martian "blueberries" provide strong evidence for:
A) liquid water on Mars today.
B) subsurface water on Mars today.
C) liquid water in Mars's past.
D) biologic activity in Mars's past.
Q2) Name two ways in which Phobos and Deimos differ from Earth's Moon.
Q3) Which terrestrial world experiences the strongest greenhouse effect?
A) Mercury
B) Venus
C) Earth
D) Mars
Q4) If Mars had a Moon like Earth's,it would be more hospitable for the evolution of life because:
A) Mars has a stronger magnetic field.
B) Mars's obliquity is more stable.
C) Mars has suffered fewer impacts.
D) Mars's atmosphere is thicker.
Q5) What geographic features on Mars provide evidence for water on Mars?
Q6) Why does Mercury lack a substantial atmosphere?
Q7) How do the volcanoes on Venus compare to those on Earth?
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Chapter 8: Gas, ice, and Stone: the Outer Planets
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Q1) The key physical process determining the structures of the giant planets is:
A) fusion.
B) magnetism.
C) pressure.
D) sunlight.
Q2) Which of the following Solar System moons has geysers spouting liquid water?
A) Io
B) Callisto
C) Titan
D) Enceladus
Q3) If Io's orbit moved outward,it would:
A) experience more impacts.
B) have more liquid water.
C) experience less volcanic activity.
D) accelerate in its orbit.
Q4) Neptune's moon Triton is unique among the large moons because it:
A) has a high albedo.
B) has an atmosphere.
C) is geologically active.
D) has a retrograde orbit.
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Chapter 9: Life and the Search for Habitable Worlds
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Sample Questions
Q1) An astronomical source is situated behind a thick cloud of hydrogen and dust.On its way to us ________ likely to be absorbed and scattered.
A) gamma rays are least
B) optical light is least
C) radio waves are least
D) all wavelengths are equally
Q2) The Drake equation estimates the:
A) number of planets hosting life in the Milky Way.
B) number of technologically advanced civilizations in the Milky Way.
C) likelihood of observing a signature of life around a star.
D) likelihood of observing a radio signal from an extraterrestrial civilization.
Q3) What defines the habitability zone around a star?
Q4) What is the most common method by which microorganisms acquire their genes?
Q5) Microorganisms and large animals differ in the:
A) nucleotides that make up their DNA.
B) physical structure of their DNA.
C) primary mechanism through which they pass genes to each other.
D) importance of natural selection to their evolution.
Q6) What is the most important process in driving evolutionary adaptation?
Q7) What is responsible for the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere?
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Chapter 10: The Sun As a Star
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Q1) What are the two properties that define a star?
Q2) Sunspots are areas of:
A) strong convection.
B) weak convection.
C) intense magnetic fields.
D) weak magnetic fields.
Q3) How are oscillations of the Sun's surface measured?
A) the sunspot cycle
B) redshifts and blueshifts of absorption lines
C) variations in the solar luminosity
D) solar neutrinos
Q4) Differentiate nuclear fusion and fission.
Q5) Which of the following properties decreases from the Sun's core to its outermost layer?
A) temperature
B) density
C) helium fraction
D) hydrogen line opacity
Q6) How can heat be transported across a vacuum?
Q7) What is the heliosphere?
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Chapter 11: Measuring the Stars: the Main Sequence and Its Meaning
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Q1) What property of Cepheid variable stars makes them useful for distance measures?
Q2) Which of the following quantities changes significantly during a star's main sequence lifetime?
A) luminosity
B) mass
C) core composition
D) color
Q3) Star A has an apparent magnitude of 7,while star B has an apparent magnitude of 12.If star A is four times more luminous than star B,how do the distances of the two stars compare?
A) Star A is 25 times farther than star B.
B) Star A is 5 times farther than star B.
C) Star A is 25 times closer than star B.
D) Star A is 5 times closer than star B.
Q4) How do astronomers determine the composition of stars?
Q5) Over the course of their hydrogen-fusing lives,stars:
A) move along the main sequence, from left to right.
B) remain in nearly the same location on the main sequence.
C) move along the main sequence, from right to left.
D) move up the red giant branch.
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Chapter 12: Nursery of the Stars: the Interstellar Medium and Star
Formation
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Q1) Suppose a star forms with 10 times the mass of the Sun and without any elements heavier than helium.How will the central temperature of this star compare to a star with the same mass but the same composition as the Sun?
Q2) A gas cloud with a temperature of 100 K is embedded in a medium of temperature 3 × 10 K and density 0.1 particle per cubic centimeter.If the gas cloud is neither expanding nor contracting,what is its density?
Q3) What would happen to the Milky Way's interstellar medium if more supernovae occurred than usual?
Q4) Two molecular clouds have identical densities,but cloud A has a radius four times larger than cloud B.How much longer will it take cloud A to collapse than cloud B? A) They collapse on the same timescale. B) twice as long C) 4 times as long D) 16 times as long
Q5) List the five phases of the interstellar medium in order from coolest to hottest.
Q6) How do the density and central temperature change as it approaches the main sequence?
Page 14
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Chapter 13: To the Graveyard of Stars: the End Points of Stellar Evolution
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Q1) Which of the following effects would stop novas occurring on a white dwarf for a period of tens of millions of years?
A) the white dwarf's interior cooling to low temperatures
B) the white dwarf's companion evolving onto the horizontal branch
C) the white dwarf undergoing a thermonuclear runaway on its surface
D) the white dwarf becoming tidally locked to its companion
Q2) Which of the following factors helps explain why planetary nebula are NOT usually spherical?
A) magnetic fields
B) accretion disk
C) binary companion
D) all of the above
Q3) What happens when a massive star's core becomes iron?
A) The star begins to fuse iron into nickel.
B) The star begins to pulsate as a variable star.
C) The star becomes a planetary nebula.
D) The star can no longer support itself against gravity.
Q4) An astronomer detects a Type Ia supernova in a distant galaxy.In order to measure the distance to the galaxy using the supernova,what must the astronomer measure?
Page 15
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Chapter 14: Down the Rabbit Hole: Relativity and Black Holes
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Q1) An accretion disk around a black hole is threaded by magnetic fields.What is a likely result of this configuration?
A) a jet of material moving near the speed of light
B) the breakup of the accretion disk
C) a reversal in the orbits of material in the accretion disk
D) bright optical emission from the accretion disk
Q2) What is the observational evidence that black hole jets are launched very close to the event horizon?
A) the narrowness of the jet
B) gravitational lensing by the black hole
C) the relativistic speeds of the jet
D) imaging of the accretion disk
Q3) Does gravitational lensing occur in Newton's formulation of gravity? Why or why not?
Q4) The first evidence for supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies came from:
A) gravitational lensing.
B) their effects on nearby stars.
C) their light output.
D) galactic winds.
Page 16
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Chapter
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is the collection of galaxies near the Milky Way called?
A) local halo
B) local Group
C) local cluster
D) nothing; the Milky Way is isolated
Q2) Where is the Sun located within the Milky Way?
A) at the center of the bulge
B) in the halo, about 1 kpc from the center
C) in the disk, about 1 kpc from the center
D) in the disk, about 8 kpc from the center
Q3) What happened to most of the stars of small galaxies that collided with the Milky Way?
A) They collided with stars in the Milky Way, destroying themselves.
B) They were incorporated into the Milky Way's disk.
C) They were incorporated into the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
D) They were incorporated into the Milky Way's stellar halo.
Q4) What is the "conundrum of old age" to an astronomer?
Q5) Baade's window is one of the few regions of the sky where astronomers can study the galactic bulge in the optical band.What makes it special in this way?
Page 17
Q6) Why are O and B stars preferentially found within spiral arms?
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Chapter 16: A Universe of Galaxies
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is "spectroscopic parallax"?
A) using stellar spectra to measure distances
B) using the apparent angular motion of stars to measure distances
C) using the redshifts of galaxy absorption lines to measure distances
D) using the apparent angular motion of galaxies to measure distances
Q2) Which of the following quantities is most useful to astronomers when measuring the dark matter content of galaxies?
A) color
B) age
C) stellar velocities
D) luminosity
Q3) Which galactic phenomenon is triggered by the same process as spiral structure?
A) galactic bars
B) globular clusters
C) tidal streams
D) the formation of spirals from ellipticals
Q4) Contrast spiral and elliptical galaxies in terms of their color,gas content,and orbital properties.
Q5) What are the four major classes of galaxies in the Universe?
Q6) Why are the bars in barred spiral galaxies typically bright?
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Chapter 17: The Cosmic Web: the Large-Scale Structure of the Universe
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Q1) What does it mean when astronomers say that dark matter is "cold"?
A) It moves slowly.
B) It clumps.
C) It cannot undergo nuclear reactions.
D) It does not emit visible light.
Q2) A region 1 Mpc across contains a total mass of 10¹³ MS n.What kind of object is this most likely to be?
A) a spiral galaxy
B) an elliptical galaxy
C) a galaxy group
D) a galaxy cluster
Q3) Which of the following discoveries would prove that the Universe is NOT isotropic,assuming all are made on very large scales?
A) a higher cosmic microwave background toward the South Celestial Pole than elsewhere
B) that most galaxies have a peculiar motion toward the Great Attractor
C) a larger galaxy density toward the North Celestial Pole than toward the South Celestial Pole
D) all of the above
19
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Chapter 18: Cosmology
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Q1) In the context of the classic Big Bang model,why is the uniformity of the cosmic microwave background's temperature puzzling?
Q2) How does inflation solve the paradox of universal uniformity?
A) It separates nearby parts of the Universe very rapidly.
B) It allows electromagnetic waves to travel faster than the speed of light.
C) It removes any fluctuations from the Universe.
D) It forces special relativity to be true.
Q3) How do scientists characterize the Universe before the Big Bang?
Q4) Leptons:
A) are susceptible to the strong nuclear force.
B) are susceptible to the weak nuclear force.
C) carry the electromagnetic force.
D) carry the gravitational force.
Q5) An astronomer discovers that all galaxies with a particular characteristic have a radius precisely equal to 10 kpc.He or she measures the angular sizes of a large set of these galaxies.How can he or she use his or her measurements to deduce the overall density of the Universe?
Q6) What were the two most common nuclei in the Universe ten minutes after the Big Bang,and what were their relative abundances?
Page 20
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