Exam 2: Gravitation and the Motion of the Planets

A diver weighing 138 pounds has just dived up and out from the high board and is doing a backflip before starting to descend toward the water. How much force does the diver exert on Earth while doing the backflip?

What is the typical period of a parabolic orbit?

Kepler's third law states that:

What distinguished the Pythagoreans from the natural philosophy of the investigators who came before them?

Retrograde motion causes the planets to

Which of these astronomers was a contemporary of (lived at the same time as) Galileo?

In what direction is Venus moving when it is at greatest elongation?

What did Galileo see when he observed Venus through his telescope?

Retrograde motion of a planet when viewed from Earth is caused by the fact that the

The semimajor axis of Earth's orbit is

Newton stated that if a force were applied to an object in space, the resultant acceleration would depend on the

Which of these statements about an asteroid moving in a circular orbit around the Sun is NOT true?

Venus can pass in front of the Sun as seen from Earth when it is at

The first person to derive the elliptical shape of planetary orbits from basic physics and mathematics (not from observations of planetary positions) was

Before deriving the shapes of planetary orbits, Johannes Kepler worked as an assistant to

The model of the solar system that Johannes Kepler proposed was

According to the scientific method, a hypothesis that is proposed to explain a particular physical phenomenon is considered to be wrong if

In an ellipse, the major axis is a distance measured

Which of these descriptions characterizes the Newtonian understanding of the mechanics of the solar system?

What is the angle between the line from Earth to Jupiter and the line from Earth to the Sun when Jupiter is at opposition?