Practice Questions:

1. Where does nuclear fusion occur in the Sun?

2. What's the phase of matter in the Sun?

3. How does the energy produced at the core of the Sun get transferred to the surface?

4. What is the average temperature of the surface of the Sun?

5. What are the axes of a Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) diagram? And on a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, where would we find red giant stars?

6. What's the apparent magnitude of the faintest star visible to the naked eye under the best possible conditions on Earth?

7. How old is the Sun?

8. How did the nuclear fusion reaction in the Sun start initially?

9. In a dark room, a red rose under a green light would appear as what color?

10. How does the apparent brightness of a star change with distance?

11. What are the stellar spectral types, from highest to lowest surface temperature?

12. What is the Sun made of?

13. What's the luminosity of a star? What's the apparent brightness of a star?

14. What are the apparent magnitude and the absolute magnitude of a star?

15. What's the diameter of the mirrors for the world's largest optical telescopes?

16. How does the mass of a star affect its longevity?

17. What counterbalances gravity in brown dwarfs and white dwarfs?

18. What is antimatter?

19. What is the greatest mass a newborn star can have? And what kind of pressure prevents stars of extremely large mass from forming?

20. How many high ocean tides do we have due to the gravitational force of the Moon?

21. How doe the kinetic energy of driving at 30 mph compare with driving at 15 mph?

22. How doe the momentum of driving at 30 mph compare with driving at 15 mph?

23. How would you describe degeneracy pressure?

24. You can say we are all "star stuff" (or star dust); why is that?

25. When does a star become a main-sequence star?

26. How does a main-sequence star regulate its own temperature and size?

27. What are the major stages of life for a low-mass star?

28. What's the energy source for the Sun?

29. What would you see if you look at a white light source through a prism?

30. Consider two pucks with same mass sitting on the surface of ice, where friction is negligible. One puck moves at a constant velocity of v. It then collides with a second puck head-on and stops. What must the velocity of the second puck be after the collision?

31. What is the meaning of E = mc2?

32. What's room temperature in °F, °C and K?

33. What is the wavelength of a wave?

34. Photon 1 has longer wavelength than photon 2. How do their energies, frequencies, and speeds compare?

35. What's the difference between potential energy and kinetic energy? Give two examples for each kind.