Solution Manual For Discovering The Essential Universe 6th Edition by Comins ISBN 1464181705 9781464181702
Solution Manual For Discovering The Essential Universe 6th Edition by Comins ISBN 1464181705 9781464181702
Solution Manual For Discovering The Essential Universe 6th Edition by Comins ISBN 1464181705 9781464181702
1. Who wrote down the equation for the law of gravitation? a. Copernicus b. Tycho c.
Newton d. Galileo e. Kepler
c. Newton proposed and developed the law of gravitation.
2. Which of the following most accurately describes the shape of Earth’s orbit around the
Sun? a. circle b. ellipse c. parabola d. hyperbola e. square
b. Earth orbits the Sun in an elliptical orbit with a small eccentricity. It is
very nearly circular.
3. Of the following planets, which takes the longest time to orbit the Sun? a. Earth b.
Uranus c. Mercury d. Jupiter e. Venus
b. Uranus takes the longest because it is farthest from the Sun.
5. How long does it take Earth to complete a sidereal orbit of the Sun?
A sidereal period is measured with respect to the distant stars. The sidereal period
of Earth is 365.26 days.
7. Which planets can never be seen at opposition? Which planets never pass through
inferior conjunction?
Inferior planets, Mercury and Venus, can never go through opposition, which is
when the planets are on the opposite side of Earth from the Sun. Superior planets
can never be seen at inferior conjunction, which is when the planet is between
Earth and Sun.
10. What are Kepler’s three laws? Why are they important?
Kepler deduced three laws of planetary motion from Tycho Brahe’s observational
data. The first law states that the planets orbit around the Sun in elliptical paths
with the Sun at one focus. His second law says that a line joining the planet and
the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times. The consequence of this second
law is that planets move faster the closer they are to the Sun, while slowing down
the farther they are away from it. The third law states that the square of a planet’s
sidereal period around the Sun is directly proportional to the cube of the length of
the semimajor axis of its orbit. This law implies that for any pair of planets, the
one that has the greater average distance has the longer year. The three laws are
important because they summarize how planets orbit the Sun and how moons
orbit planets. They are empirical fits to observational data rather than
philosophical speculation, and they represent one of the first statements that
celestial objects do not travel at uniform rates around perfectly circular orbit as
claimed by Plato. They provide the foundation for the explanation of gravity and
the measurement of mass of the Sun and planets.
11. In what ways did the astronomical observations of Galileo support a heliocentric
cosmology?
The phases of Venus and the brightness of Venus at its various phases are only
possible if Venus orbits the Sun. The motion of Jupiter’s satellites provided
evidence for objects orbiting an object other than Earth, and is easily shown to
follow Kepler’s laws.
12. How did Newton’s approach to understanding planetary motions differ from that of
his predecessors?
Whereas his predecessors, like Kepler, approached planetary motion from
astronomical observations, Newton approached it from a theoretical,
mathematical description of gravity. His equations described the orbits of the
planets, as well as the motion of other objects, but he derived them first from
principles using gravitational theory, in which any object with mass attracts any
other object with mass by means of a noncontact or field force that depends on the
masses and separation distance. Comparison of the predictions of Newton’s
equations with the predictions of Kepler’s laws (deduced from observed motion)
served to test the validity of the equations. Newton also added the “universal”
aspect to the law of gravity, indicating that the smaller object pulls on the larger
object with an equal force as the larger object exerts on it.
14. Why was the discovery of Neptune a major confirmation of Newton’s universal
law of gravitation?
Neptune cannot be directly observed without the use of a telescope, and even then
can be difficult to distinguish from background stars. The existence and location
of Neptune were correctly predicted from Newton’s law of universal gravitation
in advance of Neptune’s discovery instead of the usual method of trying to apply
a theory to explain an observation. Its presence was inferred by its gravitational
effect at a regular period, or perturbation, on the orbit of Uranus.
15. Why does an astronaut have to exert a force on a weightless object to move it?
An astronaut has to exert a force on a weightless object to move it because the
object has inertia. Inertia is the resistance any object has to changing its direction
of motion or speed, and it is represented physically by the mass of the object.
16. A comet coming inward from the Kuiper belt, a region of Sun-orbiting debris out
beyond the orbit of Neptune, experiences a gravitational force from the Sun. Does the
presence of the planets affect the comet’s orbit? Explain your reasoning.
Yes. All objects exert gravitational attraction on all other objects at all times. The
strength of the attraction depends on the mass and distance from the object. The
presence of planets can certainly have a noticeable effect to deflect, capture, or
even collide with the comet if it passes close enough to a planet, most notably
Jupiter. Some evidence for this includes the Jupiter family of short period
comets, as well as the destruction of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. This further
suggests that previous comets may have encountered similar fates.
17. How would the weight of an astronaut on the Moon compare with her weight on
Earth?
The weight of an astronaut depends on the mass and the strength of the
gravitational field at the surface. She would be lighter on the Moon. While the
astronaut’s mass would remain the same, she would weigh one-sixth as much as
she does on Earth as a result of the weaker gravity field.
18. How would the mass of an astronaut on the Moon compare with his mass on Earth?
His mass would be the same on the Moon as on Earth.
19. An astronomer observes a new comet and calculates that it will exit the solar
system and not return. Which of the following best describes the path of the comet?
a. a nearly straight line
b. a circle
c. an ellipse d.
a hyperbola
e. some other shape
d. The interpretation of this shape is that the speed of the comet is greater than the
escape speed needed to overcome the force of gravity at its closest passage to the
Sun.
20. From the definition KE = 1/2 mv2, derive the equation KE = p2/2m, as discussed
in Appendix P.
Use the definitions of kinetic energy and momentum: KE = ½ mv2, p=mv;
p2=m2v2, p2/2m = ½ mv2 = KE
21. Is it possible for an object in the solar system to have a synodic period of exactly
one year? Explain your answer.
No, it is not possible for any object other than Earth in the solar system to have a
synodic period of exactly one year. Kepler’s laws show that all objects at different
distances from the Sun have different orbital periods. If an object were farther
from the Sun than Earth, that object would have to move faster than its normal
orbital speed for it to have a synodic period of one year and thus be aligned with
Earth at the same time each year. One that was closer would have to move more
slowly than normal to have the same synodic period as Earth. It would be very
difficult to change the orbit of an object to exactly that of Earth’s. If the object
were in the same orbit as Earth, it would never change position with respect to us
and so it would not have a synodic period.
22. Describe why there is a systematic decrease in the synodic periods of the planets
from Mars outward, as shown in Table 2-1.
The time from one opposition to the next is a superior planet’s synodic period.
The farther a planet is from the Sun, the slower that planet orbits the Sun.
Therefore, the farther the planet is away from the Sun, the more quickly Earth can
return to being directly between it and the Sun—that is, the shorter the time from
opposition to opposition compared with the same intervals for superior planets
closer to Earth.
23. Make diagrams of Jupiter’s phases as seen from Earth and as seen from Saturn.
Jupiter is almost full all the time as seen from Earth. From Saturn, Jupiter’s
phases would resemble those of Venus or Mercury as seen from Earth, where
almost all phases except full would appear. See Figure 2-10.
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random and unrelated content:
Our village, lying on the north side of the valley, faces south; the
valley may here be two and a half miles wide, as the crow flies. First
come fields, then a broad stretch of woodland through which runs the Ill
river and the railway Paris-Vienna, then hills once more, in the shape of
the unprepossessing mountain called Tschallenga—popularly “der Stein.”
It is all quite simple.
On our way yesterday into these low-lying forests, we passed through
the meadow beside the church of St. Anne. A large stretch of the
adjoining woodland has recently been extirpated and converted into
pasture—the uprooted trunks are still lying about; those two old lime
trees remain untouched; the little stream has run dry. Here, on this
meadow, was a surprise: a football ground. It wore a neglected air; the
boys can only play on Sundays, since the war. Here the lords of
Blumenegg used to be received in state by the people, their lieges; here,
during the Thirty Years’ War, the fighting men of the countryside were to
assemble at a given signal by day or night, completely armed and
furnished with three days’ provision each. Here also, wholly unconcerned
about the Thirty Years’ War, I used to wait for a youthful companion to
whom I was fondly attached; here we sat and exchanged confidences, and
fashioned rustic pipes out of the twig of some shrub whose bark, in
spring, can be pulled away from its wood like the glove off a finger.
On a certain occasion—an occasion which I regard as a turning-point
—I happened to be all alone under the pines a little further on, near that
former bank of the river which is still marked by huge blocks of defensive
stone-work, now useless and smothered under a tangle of brushwood. We
visited, yesterday, the very spot where, at the callow age of seven, I
formulated, and was promptly appalled by its import, a far-reaching
aphorism: There is no God. For some obscure reason (perhaps to test the
consequences) those awful words were spoken aloud. Nothing happened.
Who can tell what previous internal broodings had led to this explosive
utterance! None at all, very likely. The phenomenon may have been as
natural and easy of birth as the flowering of a plant, the cutting of a
wisdom tooth—which, as every one knows, is nearly always a painless
process. There it was: the thing had been said. Often, later on, that little
incident under the pines recurred to my memory. I used to ask myself:
Why make such earth-convulsing speeches? And then again: Why not?
Which means the periodical relapses into credulity, into a kind of funk,
rather, occurred for the next few years. After that, my intellect ceased to
be clouded by anthropomorphic interpretations of the universe. Let each
think as he pleases. To me, even as a boy, it was misery to profess
credence in any of this Mumbo-Jumbo or to conform to any of its rites;
and a considerable relief, therefore, to escape from England into a
German gymnasium where, although games were not officially
encouraged and work fifty times harder than at home—theology, among
other subjects, being drummed into us with pestilential persistence—one
was at least not asphyxiated by the noisome atmosphere of mediæval
ecclesiasticism which infected English public schools in those days, and
will doubtless infect them in saecula saeculorum. That everlasting
“chapel” with its murky Gothic ritual—and before breakfast too: what a
fearsome way of beginning the morning! Let each think as he pleases. I
have better uses for my leisure than to try to bring others round to any
convictions of mine, such as they are; far better uses. Enough for me to
have watched the virus at work; and if I seem to be sensitive on this one
point—why, here are scores of respectable elderly gentlemen wrangling
themselves into hysterics over sanitation and Zionism and Irish politics
and other conundrums that seldom trouble my dreams.
So it came about that yesterday, at the end of nearly fifty years, I
approached once more, and with a kind of reverence, the sacred spot
under the trees where the Lutz used to flow, and there thanked my genius
for preserving me from not the least formidable of those antediluvian
nightmares which afflict mankind at its most critical period of life—the
nightmare of hopes never to be realized and of torments hardly worth
laughing at; and from all its mischievous and perverse complications.
Well, well! Men in general are brought up so differently nowadays that
they cannot realize what a disheartening trial it was for some of us
youngsters at that particular age and in that particular environment, where
you could heave a Liddell and Scott at your form-master’s head and only
get a caning for it like anybody else, whereas, if you were suspected of
doubting the miracle of the barren fig-tree, you were forthwith
quarantined, isolated, despatched into a kind of leper-colony, all by
yourself. Boys are gregarious; they resent such treatment. Let each think
as he pleases. What I think is that a grown-up man would be a poor
fellow, unless he felt fairly comfortable in any leper-colony into which
these gentle ghost-worshipers may care to relegate him....
The woods grow thicker and more solemn as you proceed downward
in the direction of Nenzing, tall firs of both varieties, some of them ivy-
wreathed, interspersed with pine-trees whose trunks of rose and silver,
struggling to obtain the same amount of light, shoot up straight as lances;
sunny clearings and stretches of meadowland where the cattle graze knee-
deep in spring; an undergrowth of junipers and other shrubs just sufficient
to diversify the scene and please the eye—never too dense: noiselessly
one treads on that emerald moss!
I had intended to take Mr. R. into a part of the forest which has always
interested me and which I never fail to visit, a region of starved pigmy
pines; and there to give him a little lecture in English on the formation of
forest loam. The Lutz in 1625, or the Ill in 1651—it is impossible for me
to decide which of the two—changed its course in consequence of a
sudden flood and took a turn to the south, abandoning its former bed. The
result was that an area of bleak shingle, far broader than the present river-
bed, was left exposed in the middle of the forest. Myriads of pine seeds
have been scattered upon it ever since, and the puny trees grow up slowly,
dwarfishly; casting down but a yearly handful of needles each, to form
the necessary soil for future generations. No moss has yet taken root after
all these years, nor can the more fastidious firs draw sustenance; the little
pines, rising from naked pebbles under foot, are in undisputed possession
of the territory. Had there been leafy willows or alders at hand, as in the
Scesa-tobel near Bludenz, the earthy covering would have been produced
long ago and this quasi-sterile tract merged into the forest on either side
of it. There were nothing but conifers on the spot, when the river forsook
its old channel; and it is uphill work for them. The “flourishing” pines and
firs of which I spoke just now have been judiciously planted; these are
self-sown. They are paying for the privilege.
We also intended to visit the Schnepfenstrich, a piece of forest between
Bludesch and Nenzing where, in days gone by, one used to lie in wait for
the woodcock at nightfall. What excitement in the dim gloaming of
March—Oculi: da kommen sie—among those patches of trees with their
scent of dampness and sprouting leaves, listening for the call of the male
bird and waiting to see him glide past, mysterious as a phantom! That was
sport worthy of the name; though I now find it not altogether easy to
conjure up the first fine rapture of that bird-massacring epoch. How
unimaginative—unpoetic, let us say—are the English, who put up this
apparition of the twilight in the vulgarest fashion with a dog, and then
slaughter him as if he were nothing but a pheasant or partridge! Such is
our manner. It is the same with the capercailzie, a stupid, worthless fowl
—and worse than worthless: is he not supplanting the finer black game?
Why not ennoble him in death, at least? Why not approach stealthily in
the chill dusk of dawn, and espy him at last, drunk with passion, on his
favorite fir? Then, if you can aim straight, he dies as we may all desire to
die—swiftly, painlessly, and like a lover in his highest moment of
exaltation. I know what Englishmen will say to this. They will say
something about cruelty and breeding-season. Your Anglo-Saxon is
always worth listening to, when he talks about cruel sports.
We had intended, I say; but those pests of horse-flies, which Mr. R.
insists upon calling “fly-horses” or “flyses-horse,” became worse and
worse. There must have been cattle in this wood, not long ago. At last,
despite clouds of tobacco-smoke, they drove us fairly out into the fields,
and not long afterwards we found ourselves on the banks of the
“Feldbächle,” a cheery streamlet whose course, from start to finish, has
approximately the shape of a horse-shoe or, better still, of a capital letter
U, resting on its left flank. It rises in a copious and frigid fountain, soon to
be visited, on the uplands behind our village, flows east through a
charming swamp region, feeds the two reservoirs, tumbles downhill in a
spectacular fall—the cataract whose water-power tempted my paternal
grandfather to establish his cotton-mills on this spot, and which is
therefore the causa causans of my presence here at this moment—babbles
fussily through the village, and there turns westwards through these
fields, to merge itself into the Tabalada stream lower down. A short but
lively career.[6]
Sometimes, in dry weather, this rivulet is blocked and allowed to flow
over the parched plain. My first memory of it dates from such an
occasion. There were puddles in the stream-bed here and there, puddles
full of trout; and a number of Italian workmen—we employed a good
many Italians at the factories—were catching these trout with their hands
and eating them alive, as if they were apples. A disgusting sight, now I
come to think of it.
A little later in life, I remember, and on a scorching summer afternoon,
my sister and I bolted into these fields from the house, presumably after
butterflies. How the sun blazed; how hot and sticky we were! And here
was the old Feldbächle full of water, gadding along in its usual brisk
style. An idea occurred to her. What about walking into it, clothes and all?
Then, at last, we should be cool again. No; not paddle about the water like
anybody else, but get right in, get properly in, in up to the neck, and lie
down there as if we were in bed. A great joke. It was only on scrambling
out again that we began to wonder what would happen at home and what,
in fact, might be the correct thing to do under the circumstances. The
problem was solved by an uphill march along the petrifying brook to far
above the needful level, a flank movement eastwards in the rear of our
own house, followed by a rapid descent into that of our friend the
gardener who, with his usual ingenuity, lighted an immense fire at which
our scanty summer garments were dried, one by one.
Those old cotton-mills of ours at the foot of the cataract of which I
spoke are an ugly blot on the landscape; an eyesore, none the less, which I
can view without resentment, since, indirectly, I owe existence to them
and would not have missed the enjoyment of this life for anything, nor
would I exchange it even now for that of any other creature on earth.
The paternal grandfather who built and worked them almost to the day
of his death must have been a man of uncommon grit. I know little about
him. A mass of family documents full of the requisite information, as well
as other papers interesting to myself, were lost in one of those accidents
which occur to everybody now and then; a trunk was broken open on a
journey, the clothes stolen and these letters and things scattered or thrown
away by the thieves. Small comfort to receive insurance money for the
clothes! I would have preferred the papers which are now lost for ever.
I cannot even say when this business was founded. It may have been in
the late thirties, for he died October, 1870, aged sixty-six, at Banchory, N.
B., where he ought to have died, and there lies entombed in our vault. His
object in thus exiling himself and family for a whole lifetime was to earn
enough money to pay back some heavy mortgages on his ancestral estate,
for which he had an idolatrous affection. This much I happen to know:
that in 1856 already, by working these mills, he was able to repay £36,000
towards the cost of them, and £24,000 towards redeeming the mortgages.
So he set himself to his grim task; and a grim task it must have been to
master the immense technical and commercial details of such an
undertaking, and all in a foreign language; to import (among other little
difficulties) every scrap of machinery from Lancashire with no railway
nearer, I fancy, than Zurich. He worked with single aim and lived to reap
his reward, although the losses due to the American Civil War, and the
Austro-German one, were such that the whole enterprise nearly came to
grief.[7]
His portrait in old age, engraved from a photograph on one of those
shell-cameos which used to be fashionable, wears an air of clean-cut,
thoughtful determination. They told me of his effective way with beggars.
“Work!” he would say, whenever one of them turned up with his usual
tale of misery. “Work! I also work.” The other, naturally enough,
professed himself quite unable to find any work. Whereupon, to the
beggar’s intense disgust, he promptly found it for him. These gentlemen
learnt to avoid our house in his day. I also gathered that his favorite ode of
Horace was “Integer vitæ.” That sounds characteristic. My own fancy
leans towards the Lady of Antium....
His eldest son carried on the business, and to him, with his love of
mountaineering and multiple other activities, it must have been irksome
in the extreme to sit in that office. He also stuck it out, but died young
and, from all accounts, the best-loved man in the province, despite his
Lutheran faith. Having occasion, during my last visit to Bregenz, to
mention my name to an unknown shopkeeper who was to send me a
parcel, I was pleased to hear him say “Your name, dear sir, is eternal in
this country.” It is doubtless gratifying to find yourself in a district where
your family is held in honor. One must try, however, not to take these
things too melodramatically. We live but once; we owe nothing to
posterity; and a man’s own happiness counts before that of any one else.
My father’s tastes happen to have lain in a direction which commended
him to his fellows. Had his nature driven him along lines that failed to
secure their sympathy, or even their approval, I should have been the last
to complain. The world is wide! Instead of coming here, one would have
gone somewhere else.
BL UME NE GG
Blumenegg
Father Bruhin
Rain
Ants
T HAT was a monster of an ant-hill. It was the largest, by far the largest,
I ever saw in this country, and the floor of the forest all around was
twinkling with these priggish insects. Anxious to have some idea of
its true size and anxious, at the same time, not to have any of the
nuisances crawling up my own legs, I made Mr. R. pace its
circumference. It took him sixteen good strides. And there they were,
myriads upon myriads of them, hiving up for their own selfish purpose
those dried fir-needles which, left alone, would have yielded a rich soil to
future generations of men.
I have no use for ants, and cannot regard an ant-heap without yearning
to stamp it flat (those made of earth are not difficult to treat in this
fashion); without regretting that I lack the tongue and tastes of an
anteater. And only in the tropics do you realize what a diabolical pest they
may become with their orderly habits; European ants being mere
amateurs in obnoxiousness. To do everything you are supposed to do, and
nothing else at all; never to make a mistake, or, if you do, to be invariably
punished for it in exact proportion to the offense: can there be a more
contemptible state of affairs? That is why, even as a boy, I used to foster
the independent little fellows called myrmeleon (ant-lion) who built their
artful, funnel-shaped traps in the dry sand out of reach of showers, just
where our house-walls touched the ground; foster them, and visit them
periodically, and feed them with these insufferable communists till they
were ready to burst. But oh, to be an authentic anteater on a Gargantuan
scale—omnipresent, insatiable of appetite—and engulf that entire tribe of
automata!
One of my countless grievances against the ant family is that a clever
person, long ago, told me that, in order to have the flesh properly
removed from the skull of any bird or beast, you have only to lay it in an
ant-hill; the insects would do the job to a turn and thank you, into the
bargain, for allowing them to do it; work of this kind, he declared, was
quite a specialty of their department. Accordingly, I once deposited an
extremely valuable relic in the center of a prosperous ant-colony,
expecting to find it ready for me, picked clean, after a due lapse of time.
On arriving to call for my property, however, a fortnight or so later, I was
surprised to find it gone; the methodical socialists had mislaid it, and I
never saw it again. One took such losses to heart in those days. I therefore
went all the way home once more, determined to get my own job done
more conscientiously than theirs, and fetched a rake wherewith this
slovenly establishment was leveled to the ground. But oh, for a rake that
would rake every ant-hill off the face of the earth!
That happened in my bird-killing period, when I used to get up at the
improbable hour of 3:30 a.m. and, putting in my Rucksack some bread
and smoked bacon-fat and a flask of Kirsch, vanish into the wilds,
returning home any time after nightfall or not at all: judge if I saw some
ant-hills! So I roved about, and the first thing I ever murdered, an hour
after receiving that single-barreled gun, was a melancholy brown owl that
blinked at me from its perch below the Bährenloch at Bludenz; the
slaughter of this charming bird was taken as a good omen. Soon came
other guns, and other birds, not all of which shared the fate of the owl.
Never shall I forget a certain pratincole. It was the only one I have yet
seen in this province, a great rarity, and it settled down for a whole
summer season in the reservoir region along the upper Montiola brook,
where it relied upon its disconcerting flight and a trick of rising from the
ground at the one and only spot where you could not possibly expect it to
do so, to mock all my attempts at bringing it down. I was after it so often
that we got to know each other perfectly well, and never bagged it;
thereby proving the truth of the local proverb “Every day is hunting day,
but not every day is catching day.” Queer experiences one had, too. At the
age of fourteen I was once resting on my homeward way in the woods
near Gasünd, dead tired but uncommonly pleased with myself for having
just shot a hazel grouse—again, the only one I ever saw in the province.
There came one of those flocks of titmice—is not titmouses the correct
English?—accompanied, no doubt, by the inevitable tree-creeper. They
amused themselves in the branches overhead and one of them soon struck
me as unfamiliar; its size and shape and movements were those of a great
tit, but there were unmistakable red feathers on the head and neck. I
watched it hopping from twig to twig, annoyed to think that I had shot
away my last cartridge, and wondering what this rare mountain bird could
be, for I never doubted of its actuality; there it was, before my eyes! Only
later did I learn that no such bird exists. Now had the vision been brought
about by my state of bodily exhaustion? And was the dream-bird created
out of one of those present, or out of nothing at all? Illusion, or
hallucination?