Exam 4: Gravitation and the Waltz of the Planets

The period in Kepler's third law, P² = a³, is measured in:

Tycho Brahe's most important contribution to the development of modern astronomy was the:

Acceleration of a body is the rate of change with time of its:

Imagine a cannonball shot straight upward. At its highest point it stops, momentarily, before falling back to earth. At this highest point, what forms of energy does it possess?

Which one of the following statements about the observation of retrograde motion is correct? Retrograde motion can be observed on:

If an object is launched radially away from a planet, it will continue to follow a straight path. If it is not launched radially, however, its path will be a curve. If the launch speed is less than the escape speed, (assuming it reaches an orbit) this curve will be (an):

Consider a satellite in a circular orbit. Suppose it loses some energy to friction in the thin upper atmosphere. What will be its subsequent orbit? (See Figure 4-22, Universe, 11th ed.) ​ ​

When do spring tides occur?

Newton, in his second law of motion, stated that any body of mass m acted on by a force F:

An asteroid in the asteroid belt orbits the Sun at a distance of 2.8 au. Using Kepler's laws and the relation between an object's sidereal period and synodic period, determine the synodic period of this asteroid when observed from Earth.

Earth moves eastward in its orbit around the Sun, and so does Mars. Suppose Mars moved westward rather than eastward. What result would this have on the retrograde motion of Mars as observed from Earth? (You might need to make a drawing similar to Figure 4-5 of Universe, 11th ed. to answer this question.) ​ ​

What is the synodic period of Neptune? (See Table of Orbital Data in Appendix 1, Universe, 11th ed.) ​ ​

One of the important innovations in the work of Tycho Brahe was:

Greek philosophy after about 600 B.C.E., beginning with the Pythagoreans and others, was quite different from the philosophies (Babylonian, Egyptian, etc.) that preceded it. What was this important difference?

Two asteroids are separated by a distance R and feel a force F due to their mutual gravitational attraction. They now drift until their separation is R/3. What is their mutual gravitational attraction at this separation?

Galileo Galilei died in the same year that saw the birth of:

If a particular asteroid with a circular orbit is seen at opposition every 1.44 years, then its sidereal period is:

If we could observe a planet in orbit around the Sun but very far away, as its distance approached infinity, its sidereal period would approach:

Copernicus's model for the planetary system:

Which of the following planets shows the smallest maximum western elongation when viewed from Earth?