Final Exam
Wednesday, July 3
This is a closed book, closed note exam worth 100 points (20% of your final grade) and which ends promptly at 10:50 AM. There are 20 multiple choice questions worth 2 points each, 15 short answer questions worth 3 points each, and 3 long answer questions worth 5 points each. Put your name and ID number on the test sheet. Please read each question carefully. Good luck!
Multiple Choice (2 points each)
1. What is the approximate ratio of ice to rock in Saturn's moons?
A) 1:10
B) 1:5
C) 1:1
D) 10:1
E) None of the above
2. Tidal forces between bodies in the solar system cause all of these effects but one:
A) A bulge on one side of the planet
B) Circularization of eccentric orbits
C) Volcanism
D) Impact Cratering
E) Synchronous rotation
3. Naturally produced ozone mostly exists in the Earth's atmosphere where?
A) the stratosphere
B) the stratopause
C) the troposphere
D) the tropopause
E) None of the above
4. Which of the following is an example of parallax:
A) You pass a truck and it appears to back up
B) The seasonal wobble of nearby stars
C) The retrograde motion of Mars
D) All of the above
E) None of the above
5. The tail of a comet:
A) Always points away from the Sun
B) Always streaks back along its direction of motion
C) Is a stream of water floating off into space
D) Is mostly hydrogen and helium
E) Is mostly made of very small rocks
6. The Earth's blue sky:
A) Is caused by the absorption of certain wavelengths of light
B) Is caused by the scattering of light
C) Is the light emitted by atoms and molecules
D) Is a universal feature of all terrestrial planets
E) Was first discovered by Ptolemy
7. Which of these is not part of the carbonate-silicate cycle on the Earth?
A) Volcanism
B) Precipitation of carbonate in the oceans
C) Plate tectonics
D) Reaction of rainwater with rocks on the continents
E) The ozone hole
8. Which of the following pairings of planets with moons is incorrect?
A) Saturn with Triton
B) Jupiter with Europa
C) Pluto with Charon
D) Jupiter with Ganymede
E) They are all correct
9. Carbonaceous material condenses at a temperature:
A) Greater than iron
B) Less than frozen gases
C) Greater than water
D) Carbonaceous material doesn't condense
E) None of the above
10. The Galileo spacecraft:
A) Dropped a probe on Titan
B) Dropped a probe into Jupiter's clouds
C) Flew by Uranus and Neptune
D) Landed on Mars
E) None of the above
11. Which planet was found by calculating its predicted position and then looking for it?
A) Uranus
B) Jupiter
C) Mercury
D) Neptune
E) None of the above
12. Which of these solar system objects is NOT tilted on its side?
A) Uranus
B) Pluto
C) Charon
D) Titan
E) None of the above
13. Icy bodies that orbit between Saturn and Neptune are called:
A) Main belt asteroids
B) Meteorites
C) Moons
D) Oort cloud comets
E) None of the above
14. Let's say you were looking at a rock with a white light. You notice it is red in color. This is due to:
A) The absorption of red light
B) Scattering
C) The reflection of blue light
D) The reflection of red light
E) None of the above
15. Which of the following could not be measured with satellites by Mission to Planet Earth?
A) Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere
B) Rainforest deforestation rates
C) The economic health of major US corporations
D) Water resource management
E) None of the above
16. A 'shepherd moon' is a:
A) Stray asteroid caught weakly in a giant planet's gravitational field
B) A particularly bright Full Moon seen on Earth during the harvest season
C) A moon that has been significantly altered by geological processes
D) A moon just on the inside or outside of a ring around a gas giant planet
E) None of the above
17. Which of the following elements are necessary for producing hydrocarbons?
A) hydrogen and nitrogen
B) carbon and hydrogen
C) oxygen and nitrogen
D) hydrogen and helium
E) None of the above
18. Which of the following is true:
A) The stratopause is above the stratosphere
B) The stratosphere is below the troposphere
C) The tropopause is below the troposphere
D) The stratopause is below the lithosphere
E) None of the above
19. Charon is:
A) A Centaur
B) An Apollo asteroid
C) A moon of Jupiter
D) A moon of Pluto
E) None of the above
20. Which of the following is probably NOT true on Titan?
A) Titan has seas of liquid methane and ethane
B) Titan has a significant amount of oxygen in its atmosphere
C) Titan has an ethylene-acetylene haze high up in its atmosphere
D) Titan is colder than the coldest day on Mars
E) None of the above
Short Answer (3 points each)
21. Which of the gas giant planets has little or no patterns on its cloud tops?
22. Name 2 things that can heat a planet and cause it to express geological activity. Give a brief example of one.
23. Why can't a big moon form inside the Roche limit of a planet?
24. Cite 3 independent observational results that can support the hypothesis that moon formation around a giant planet is similar to the formation of the planets around the Sun.
25. Why are planets further from the Sun colder? Why would a planet at a given distance from the Sun be warmer than another planet closer in?
26. Explain why Io is more geologically active than Europa.
27. Describe one kind of disaster, affecting humans, that has been predicted to result from the impact of an asteroid on the Earth.
28. On the Moon, there are many more small craters than large ones. Let's say that you were looking at a photo of the martian surface, and you noticed that it had the same number of large craters as the Moon, but fewer small craters. How would you explain this?
29. Give one reason why it is unlikely that Titan has a global ocean.
30. What practice in the scientific process acts as 'quality assurance'?
31. Describe one way that you could detect a thin ring around a distant gas giant, if you couldn't see the ring directly with a telescope.
32. If you were looking at an orbiting moon around a gas giant planet with a telescope, how would you explain the fact that you could see it on one side of the planet but not the other?
33. Where do short period comets come from, and where do long-period comets come from?
34. If a comet was a sphere of pure water 1 km in diameter and it lost a 1 meter layer of ice every time it went around the Sun, how many orbits would it last?
35. If it took 100 years for the comet to go one orbit, how long would the comet exist? You can use whatever answer you calculated in question 34. If you didn't calculate anything, assume it would last 100 orbits.
Long Answer (5 points each)
36. Draw Jupiter, it's rings, and the 4 Galilean moons. Label Jupiter's axis and north pole, and indicate the direction of its rotation. Label each of the 4 Galilean moons in their correct order out from Jupiter, and indicate the direction in which they orbit.
37. Describe the evolution of the Earth's atmosphere by answering the following questions. What two major compounds existed in the early atmosphere of the Earth? What happened to each of them? Where are they stored now? Where did the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere come from?
38. Draw the solar system, to scale and as neatly as you can. Label each of the planets and indicate the direction in which they orbit around the Sun. Include the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt. Assume that the scale on your drawing is 1 foot equals 500 AU. How many feet away is the Oort cloud, approximately?
7/3/96