The first exam is on Friday, April 16. It will cover everything we did from chapters 1, 2 and 3, plus sections 1-2 in Chapter 4. It will also cover
the questions we covered in the homework and in class, or ones that are similar to those.
The list below is not intended to be a complete study guide,
but rather to assist you in recalling the different topics and concepts
that were covered.
Make sure you know that light-years (LY) are the units for distance in astronomy!!!!!
Review list for Physics 101 Exam 1 (under construction)
Chapter 1
- Observations that support the Big Bang theory
- light years are a unit of distance, it is how far light travels in one year
- how the universe formed (big bang theory)
- How the elements hydrogen and helium formed
- how elements heavier than H and He form
- how the elements heavier than iron form
- how stars form
- how planets form, how long this takes relative to star formation
- what are supernovae, and what do they have to do with elements heavier than iron?
- what happens to a star like the sun at the end of its life
Chapter 2
- know what geocentric and heliocentric mean
- Know what the beliefs (heliocentric vs. geocentric etc) and contributions of Kepler, Brahe, Newton, Copernicus, and Galileo were
- know what parallax is, and why it had people doubting that the earth moved around the sun
- know what retrograde motion is
- know what Kepler's three laws are, and know how to apply Kepler's third law to relate the distance between the Sun and a planet, to the time it takes to travel around the sun once.
- know what aphelion, perihelion, eccentricity, and semimajor axis mean, and how they relate to one another.
- know what Newton's laws were, and how newton improved upon Kepler's third law
Chapter 3
- Know which characteristics are shared by all life on earth
- all life uses DNA, ATP, and is carbon-based and requires liquid water
- evolution is an observation, best explained by natural selection
- know what natural selection is (survival of the fittest)
- know what the three domains of life are, how are they similar, how are they different
- carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, nucleic acids
- what does "handedness" or chirality mean? how can it indicate a rock has living organisms in it or not?
- DNA: replication, transcription, and translation
- know what metabolism is (a means of extracting energy from the environment, something all living things must do) and that all organisms use ATP.
- autotrophs vs. heterotrophs
- life in extreme environments
Chapter 4
- review the stages of planet formation, and what this means for the newly-formed earth (it was completely molten from the heat released in the process)
- what do we mean by differentiated? what does this imply for a body that has differentiated?
- the giant impact theory is the leading idea as to how the moon formed. know the details.
- the moon's density is less than earth's. what does this have to do with the moon forming impact?
- know what radioactive decay is and what isotopes are
- know that the ages of rocks can be very accurately determined through radioactive decay methods
- know that in order to acurately date a rock, you have to measure the abundance of an element with a half-life of something similar to the rocks's estimated age. and know why we have to do that.
- you don't have to memorize the half-lifes of all those elements in the chart!