Homework 01
Please answer at least 4 of the following 5 questions correctly for full
credit:
Question 1
What is responsible for the seasons: The tilt of the axis of Earth's daily
rotation or the change in distance between Earth and Sun? Give a reason why
the other answer would not be correct.
Question 2
What does it mean to say that the Earth is 8 light-minutes away from the
Sun?
Question 3
In simple words: What is the reason for the precession of the earth axis that
is responsible for the change in polar star with time?
Question 4
In reality the diameters of the Sun (1.4 million km) and the Moon
(3.5 thousand km) are very different indeed.
If we measure the angle their respective diameters suspend in the sky though,
they both come out almost the same: 1/2 of a degree... Why is that?
Question 5 (the quantitative one...)
On graphs we use axes to show amounts of a physical quantity. To go up or
to the right along an axis normally(!) means to increase the quantity shown
on that particular axis. On a normal (linear) axis moving up or right by
e.g. 1 inch means a certain amount of increase in the quantity shown, and
moving by 2 inches means and increase by double that amount. If moving by 1
inch on an axis with a log scale means to increase the quantity shown on that
axis by a factor of 5, what increase will be achieved by a moving 2 inches
along that same log-scale?
Please submit your answer as plain test in the main message body of an e-mail to
kai-1060-hw@physics.utah.edu
before midnight (MST) on Thursday, January 17, 2008. Plain text in the main
message body of your e-mail means
Last modified: Fri Jan 11 15:29:27 MST 2008