Course Introduction
Physical Science Exam
Practice Tests
Physical Science is an interdisciplinary course that explores the fundamental principles governing the natural world, focusing on the fields of physics, chemistry, astronomy, and earth sciences. Students will investigate topics such as the structure of matter, laws of motion, energy transformations, chemical reactions, the nature of forces, and the composition of the universe. Through hands-on experiments, problem-solving activities, and real-world applications, the course emphasizes scientific reasoning, critical thinking, and the development of a foundational understanding of how physical phenomena shape our everyday lives.
Recommended Textbook
Understanding Our Universe 2nd Edition by Stacy Palen
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18 Chapters
1026 Verified Questions
1026 Flashcards
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Page 2
Chapter 1: Thinking Like an Astronomer
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54 Verified Questions
54 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is the Local Group?
Answer: The group of a dozen or so galaxies including the Milky Way that are within a few million light-years of each other.
Q2) Approximately how many meters are in 12 ft?
A) 3
B) 4
C) 12
D) 36
Answer: B
Q3) Name three dwarf planets.
Answer: Pluto,Ceres,Eris.
Q4) If the diameter of our galaxy is approximately 100,000 light-years,our galaxy is ________ times larger than our Solar System.
A) 100
B) 104
C) 106
D) 108
Answer: C
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Page 3
Chapter 2: Patterns in the Skymotions of Earth and the Moon
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Sample Questions
Q1) Approximately how often do lunar eclipses occur?
A) twice every year
B) once per month
C) twice every 11 months
D) once every 11 years
Answer: C
Q2) What is the length of day during the equinoxes and solstices? Does it matter if you are in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere?
Answer: The equinoxes occur when the Sun is directly above the equator; the entire world experiences a 12-hour day and a 12-hour night.The solstices occur when the Sun is farthest from the equator (north or south).On these days,one hemisphere experiences its longest day and shortest night,while the other hemisphere experiences its shortest day and longest night.
Q3) The ecliptic plane is defined by the motion of ________ in the sky.
A) the Moon
B) the Sun
C) Polaris
D) the stars
Answer: B
Page 4
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Chapter 3: Laws of Motion
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Sample Questions
Q1) An empirical science is one that is based on:
A) assumptions.
B) calculus.
C) computer models.
D) observed data.
Answer: D
Q2) Name the two ways in which an object's motion (meaning its velocity)can experience a nonzero acceleration.
Answer: The object can have a nonzero acceleration if the speed of its velocity changes or if the direction of the velocity changes.
Q3) What is your acceleration if you go from 0 to 60 mph in 4 seconds?
A) 60 mph/s
B) 30 mph/s
C) 15 mph/s
D) 8.5 mph/s
Answer: C
Q4) What acceleration would result from a 5-N force acting on a 3-kg object? (A Newton [N] has units of kg m/s².)
Answer: a = F/m = 5 N/3 kg = 1.67 m/s².
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Chapter 4: Light and Telescopes
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which formula denotes how the speed of light is related to its wavelength and frequency?
A) c = lf
B) c = l/f
C) c = f/l
D) c = 1/lf
Q2) The most important improvement that photography provides over naked-eye observations is:
A) it is possible to observe a larger field of view with photographic plates.
B) the quantum efficiency is higher for photographic plates.
C) the image resolution is much better for photographic plates.
D) it is possible to detect fainter objects with the use of photographic plates.
Q3) How do telescopes advance astronomical science?
Q4) Which properties of light changes in a refractive medium?
A) wavelength
B) frequency, speed, and wavelength
C) wavelength and speed
D) speed
Q5) Explain why stars twinkle when viewed from the ground.Would they twinkle if viewed from outer space?
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Chapter 5: The Formation of Stars and Planets
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Sample Questions
Q1) You record the spectrum of a star and find that the calcium absorption line,whose rest wavelength is 393.3 nm,has an observed wavelength of 394.0 nm.What is the radial velocity of this star?
A) 500 km/s
B) 50 km/s
C) 5 km/s
D) 0.5 km/s
Q2) Conservation of angular momentum slows a cloud's collapse: A) equally in all directions.
B) only when the cloud is not rotating initially.
C) mostly along directions perpendicular to the cloud's axis of rotation.
D) mostly at the poles that lie along the cloud's axis of rotation.
Q3) For a star that lies in the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun,how does the observed wavelength of a hydrogen absorption line in its spectrum change in wavelength (if at all)with the time of year?
Q4) What does conservation of angular momentum mean?
Q5) How does gravitational energy get converted to thermal energy in a gas cloud?
Q6) How does the size of planets in the solar system relate to the constituents of their atmospheres?
Page 7
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Chapter 6: Terrestrial Worlds in the Inner Solar System
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Sample Questions
Q1) Whereas volcanic activity usually results in reduced visible evidence of impact cratering on a planet's surface,how can visible evidence of both impact cratering AND volcanic activity be reconciled?
Q2) If the Himalaya mountain range is currently 8,000 meters in height and is rising at a rate of 0.5 meter per century because of the convergence of two continental plates,how long did it take to create this mountain range?
A) 1,600 years
B) 160,000 years
C) 1.6 million years
D) 160 million years
Q3) Based on the assumption that a liquid conducting core and rapid rotation are both required for a magnetic field to operate,which terrestrial planets would you expect to have magnetic fields?
A) Earth only
B) Earth, Venus, and Mars only
C) Earth and Mars only
D) Earth and Mercury only
Q4) Why are impact craters rare on the surface of Earth but plentiful on the Moon?
Q5) What causes the tides on Earth,and how frequently do high and low tides occur?
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Chapter 7: Atmospheres of Venus, earth, and Mars
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Sample Questions
Q1) An asteroid with an albedo of 0.1 and a comet with an albedo of 0.6 are orbiting at roughly the same distance from the Sun.How do their temperatures compare?
A) They both have the same temperature.
B) The comet is hotter than the asteroid.
C) The asteroid is hotter than the comet.
D) You must know their distance to compare their temperatures.
Q2) If Saturn has a semimajor axis of 10 AU and an albedo of 0.7,what is its expected temperature?
A) 130 K
B) 65 K
C) 35 K
D) 170 K
Q3) If plant life were to die on Earth,
A) the atmosphere would become denser.
B) oxygen would disappear from the atmosphere.
C) the atmosphere would become too sparse.
D) nitrogen would disappear from the atmosphere.
Q4) Why does the temperature decrease as you go higher up in altitude in the troposphere on Earth?
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Chapter 8: The Giant Planets
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Sample Questions
Q1) Why would a planet's rings reflect 50 percent of the sunlight they receive?
A) They are made of ice.
B) They are made of silicate rock.
C) They are made of iron.
D) They are very old.
Q2) The giant planet atmospheric vortices are created by a combination of the Coriolis effect and:
A) rapid rotation.
B) convection.
C) their strong magnetic fields.
D) Hadley circulation.
Q3) Why are Jupiter and Saturn not perfectly spherical?
A) They formed from the collision of two large planetesimals.
B) They rotate rapidly.
C) They have storms that develop preferentially along their equators.
D) They have very active auroras that heat the atmospheres along the poles.
Q4) Why are auroras visible mostly at the north or south magnetic poles of the giant planets?
Q5) Why do we suspect that the inner planets do not have rings?
Q6) How has Jupiter retained a significant portion of its heat since it formed?
Page 10
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Chapter 9: Small Bodies of the Solar System
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Sample Questions
Q1) What are the two basic materials of which the moons in the Solar System are composed? For each type of material,name an example of a moon whose surface is composed primarily of that material.
Q2) What is the most common geological feature seen on moons?
A) craters
B) volcanoes
C) palimpsests
D) geysers
Q3) Which of the following is the BRIGHTEST part of a comet?
A) its nucleus
B) its coma
C) its ion tail
D) its dust tail
Q4) How do particles from Enceladus wind up in Saturn's E Ring?
A) Volcanoes erupt and expel silicates into space.
B) Water geysers erupt from the surface and expel particles into space.
C) Cosmic rays bombard the surface rock on Enceladus and expel particles into space.
D) A collision with a co-orbiting moon knocked rocky debris into orbit around Saturn.
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Chapter 10: Measuring the Stars
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following properties is never plotted on the horizontal axis of an H-R diagram?
A) color
B) luminosity
C) temperature
D) spectral class
Q2) Why do we see black lines in an absorption spectrum if the absorbed photons are (almost)instantaneously reemitted by the atoms in the cloud?
Q3) The stars that have the largest radii are classified as:
A) giants.
B) ultragiants.
C) supergiants.
D) dwarfs.
Q4) Parallax is used to directly measure:
A) distance.
B) velocity.
C) luminosity.
D) mass.
Q5) How do astronomers use spectra to determine the composition of a star?
Q6) How are atoms excited,and why do they decay?
Page 12
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Chapter 11: Our Star: the Sun
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Sample Questions
Q1) If a sunspot is half as bright as the surrounding photosphere of the Sun,what is the approximate temperature of the gas in the sunspot if the photosphere's average temperature is 5800 K?
Q2) Why is hydrogen burning the main energy source for main-sequence stars? Give at least two reasons.
Q3) Approximately how long does it take the photons released in nuclear reactions in the core of the Sun to exit the photosphere?
A) 8 minutes
B) 16 hours
C) 1,000 years
D) 100,000 years
Q4) The surface of the Sun appears sharp because the photosphere is:
A) cooler than the layers below it.
B) thin compared to the other layers in the Sun.
C) much less dense than the convection zone.
D) transparent to radiation.
Q5) What is "limb darkening"? Explain why limb darkening occurs in the Sun.
Q6) What are the three ways in which energy could be transported within a star (or to your fingers)? Explain your answer.
Page 13
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Chapter 12: Evolution of Low-Mass Stars
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Sample Questions
Q1) A nova is the result of which explosive situation?
A) mass transfer onto a white dwarf
B) helium burning in a degenerate stellar core
C) a white dwarf that exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit
D) the collision of members of a binary system
Q2) A single 1-M¤ star will eventually eject significant amounts of which of the following chemical elements into the interstellar medium?
A) hydrogen
B) nickel
C) iron
D) all of the above
Q3) As a solar-type star evolves off the main sequence,its:
A) core and envelope expand.
B) core and envelope shrink.
C) core shrinks and envelope expands.
D) core expands and envelope shrinks.
Q4) Why does helium burning in the core of a giant star not cause the star to become more luminous?
Q5) Explain the significance of Roche lobes in a binary system.
Q6) What particles are degenerate in a white dwarf?
Page 14
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Chapter 13: Evolution of High-Mass Stars
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is NOT true about Cygnus X-1?
A) It is a binary star.
B) It contains a black hole.
C) It is a source of X-rays.
D) It is a neutron star.
Q2) If a 60-M¤ main-sequence star loses mass at a rate of 10 M¤/year,then how much mass will it lose in its 300,000-year lifetime?
A) 3 M¤
B) 8 M¤
C) 10 M¤
D) 30 M¤
Q3) Light is increasingly redshifted near a black hole because:
A) the photons are moving away from us very quickly as they are sucked into the black hole.
B) the photons are moving increasingly faster in order to escape the pull of the black hole.
C) time is moving increasingly slower in the observer's frame of reference.
D) the curvature of spacetime is increasingly stretched near the black hole, which in turn stretches the wavelengths of the photons.
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Page 15
Chapter 14: Measuring Galaxies
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Sample Questions
Q1) Does Hubble's law imply that our galaxy is sitting at the center of the universe? Explain.
Q2) Name the two primary classes of proposed sources of dark matter.What objects are included in each class,and which one is the most likely source of dark matter?
Q3) Which of the following is NOT associated with the arms of a spiral galaxy?
A) density waves
B) ongoing stellar formation
C) dust lanes
D) random stellar orbits
Q4) What is a quasar?
A) an AGN powered by a supermassive black hole
B) a star that only emits radio waves
C) a star made up of quarks
D) a galaxy that has its light affected by a gravitational lens
Q5) If the distance of a galaxy at a redshift z = 0.5 is 1,800 Mpc,what is H ?
A) 3,600 km/s/Mpc
B) 0.0003 km/s/Mpc
C) 83 km/s/Mpc
D) 900 km/s/Mpc
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Chapter 15: Our Galaxy: the Milky Way
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Sample Questions
Q1) How does the H-R diagram of a globular star cluster show that its age is very old?
Provide a sketch of an H-R diagram for a globular cluster.
Q2) Describe the differences between the ages and chemical abundances of globular and open star clusters.
Q3) Most of the mass in our galaxy is in the form of:
A) stars
B) gas
C) dust
D) dark matter
Q4) Explain how a standard candle allows you to determine the distance to an object.What is it that you have to measure or know about the standard candle to derive its distance?
Q5) Cosmic rays are:
A) photons with even higher energy than gamma rays.
B) high-velocity particles produced in novae.
C) primarily protons with very high energies.
D) synchrotron emission from strong magnetic fields.
Q6) How does the H-R diagram of an open cluster show that its age is very young?
Provide a sketch of an H-R diagram for an open cluster.
Page 17
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Chapter 16: The Evolution of the Universe
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Sample Questions
Q1) Why is the universe made up of matter as opposed to antimatter?
Q2) The existence of the cosmic microwave background radiation tells us that the early universe was:
A) much hotter than it is today.
B) much colder than it is today.
C) composed entirely of radiation at early times.
D) composed entirely of stars at early times.
Q3) The COBE and WMAP satellites detected fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation.On average,how big were these fluctuations,and what does that tell us about the very early universe?
Q4) Which of the following is NOT a prediction of the standard Big Bang theory that has been successfully verified by observations?
A) The universe is expanding.
B) The faintest galaxies look redder because their stars are younger.
C) Helium, lithium, and beryllium were made as the universe cooled after the initial Big Bang.
D) The early universe was very hot and dense.
Q5) What is the "flatness problem" in cosmology?
Q6) What can solve the flatness and horizon problem in cosmology,and why?
Page 18
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Chapter 17: Formation of Structure
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Sample Questions
Q1) What process is most responsible for shaping the large-scale structure of the universe?
A) supernovae from the first generation of stars
B) gravity
C) matter/antimatter annihilation
D) magnetic fields
Q2) Evaluate some of the difficulties in modeling the evolution of galaxies.
Q3) What do astronomers believe will be the final state of our universe?
A) a "Big Crunch" in which everything collapses back in on itself
B) an ever-expanding universe filled with nothing but hydrogen and helium gas
C) a universe that stops expanding and is filled with nothing but white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes
D) an ever-expanding universe filled with photons and elementary particles
Q4) What is the evidence that galaxies form via hierarchical merging?
Q5) Describe the large-scale structure of the universe.
Q6) Which era corresponds to the final stage of the universe?
A) Dark Era
B) Degenerate Era
C) Stelliferous Era
D) Primordial Era
Page 19
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Chapter 18: Life in the Universe
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Sample Questions
Q1) As the Sun evolves into a red giant,where will we need to move to within our Solar System if humanity still exists?
A) Mars
B) Mercury
C) our Moon
D) the moons of the outer planets
Q2) What is SETI,what is its main objective,and how does it plan to achieve its objective?
Q3) Why would the 21-cm line be a good place to search for signals from intelligent life in the universe?
Q4) Calculate the maximum likelihood that any technically advanced civilization that arose still exists in our galaxy today.
Q5) Which one of the following is NOT one of the three categories of terrestrial life based on its DNA characteristics?
A) bacteria
B) Eukarya
C) Archaea
D) fungi
Q6) Describe what is meant by "galactic habitable zone."
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