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1 | |
Science can be thought of as |
| | A) | a set of laws and theories based on religious beliefs and speculation. |
| | B) | an example of a human endeavor that has failed to provide any practical or useful results. |
| | C) | a body of knowledge that is tentative in nature and subject to change as more evidence is gathered. |
| | D) | as the best way to understand the nature and meaning of the arts. |
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2 | |
A scientific law or theory is discarded if |
| | A) | no one uses it in a scientific paper for over fifty years. |
| | B) | after a certain number of years, at which time a scientist may try to reestablish it with new tests. |
| | C) | a committee of scientists says so. |
| | D) | it is contradicted by new experimental findings. |
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3 | |
The distinction between law and theory as used by scientists is |
| | A) | a law is just a convenient hypothesis whereas a theory is known to be true. |
| | B) | a law tells what happens, and a theory tells us why it happens. |
| | C) | there really is no distinction between law and theory as used by practicing scientists. |
| | D) | scientific laws always conform to "common sense" whereas scientific theories rarely do. |
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4 | |
Which object below moves the fastest through the sky relative to the fixed stars? |
| | A) | Polaris |
| | B) | Venus |
| | C) | the sun |
| | D) | the moon |
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5 | |
Constellations consist of |
| | A) | stars determined by astronomers to be of about the same age. |
| | B) | stars grouped in terms of distance from the earth. |
| | C) | planets found in our solar system. |
| | D) | stars in the same region of the sky, as viewed from earth. |
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6 | |
A planet visible to the naked eye is |
| | A) | Venus. |
| | B) | Uranus. |
| | C) | Neptune. |
| | D) | the moon. |
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7 | |
A planet unknown in ancient times is |
| | A) | Neptune. |
| | B) | Venus. |
| | C) | Mars. |
| | D) | Mercury. |
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8 | |
The Ptolemaic system was ultimately rejected by the scientific community because |
| | A) | its explanations of celestial motions, based on observations, resulted in testable predictions. |
| | B) | it was never openly presented in book form, rather being passed down among members of a secret astrological society. |
| | C) | it was believed to represent an accurate view of the universe and solar system by religious leaders and science and religion can never agree. |
| | D) | a simpler system, with greater explanatory power, that matched the empirical data more accurately, was developed. |
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9 | |
Kepler was able to refine the Copernican system by analyzing |
| | A) | the extensive and accurate observations made by Tycho Brahe. |
| | B) | the movement of a comet which mimicked the movements of planets. |
| | C) | when he discovered that combinations of circles forming looped orbits. |
| | D) | when he discovered that planets are all the same distance apart from one another. |
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10 | |
The path a planet makes around the sun is called the planet's |
| | A) | revolution. |
| | B) | orbit. |
| | C) | rotation. |
| | D) | period. |
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11 | |
The Copernican system was accepted by many scientists in the late 1700s because |
| | A) | most people believed that the Copernican system is correct, and the majority viewpoint rules in democratic societies. |
| | B) | predictions of planetary motions based on the Copernican system, as refined by Kepler, Newton, and others were verified empirically and proved to be incredibly accurate, even allowing the discovery of a new planet. |
| | C) | direct evidence that the earth rotates and the planets revolve around the sun came with the launching of the first unmanned rockets. |
| | D) | a committee of scientists certified that the Copernican system is correct in 1781. |
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12 | |
The speed of a planet in its elliptical orbit around the sun |
| | A) | is constant. |
| | B) | is lowest when the planet is farthest from the sun. |
| | C) | is lowest when the planet is closest to the sun. |
| | D) | varies, but not with respect to the planet's distance from the sun. |
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13 | |
According to Kepler's third law, the time needed for a satellite to complete an orbit around a particular planet |
| | A) | is the same for all the satellites around the particular planet. |
| | B) | depends on the gravitational constant, which varies from planet to planet. |
| | C) | is independent of the planet's distance from the sun. |
| | D) | can be calculated if we know the distance of the satellite from the planet and the period and average orbital radius of a second satellite orbiting around the same planet. |
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14 | |
It is very unlikely that Newton would have discovered the law of gravity if |
| | A) | the planets Uranus and Neptune had not been found first. |
| | B) | he had lived in the 1300s when the Ptolemaic system was generally accepted by all scientists. |
| | C) | he had ignored the fact that the earth is not a perfect sphere. |
| | D) | the law that states what goes up must come down had been discovered first. |
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15 | |
The law of gravity |
| | A) | is applicable to all objects with mass. |
| | B) | accounts for all known forces. |
| | C) | holds only in the solar system. |
| | D) | was demonstrated by Copernicus to vary from planet to planet. |
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16 | |
A fundamental force |
| | A) | can be broken down into numerous smaller supplementary forces. |
| | B) | is an imaginary concept that Kepler used to explain how the planets were pulled along in their orbits around the sun. |
| | C) | cannot be explained in terms of any other force; gravity is one of the four fundamental forces currently accepted by the modern scientific community. |
| | D) | is a force that acts alone on an object without interference from any other force. |
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17 | |
The spin of the earth |
| | A) | forces the axis to flip periodically, thus causing the seasons. |
| | B) | causes the earth to revolve around the sun. |
| | C) | creates a slight bulge at the creator and a flattening at the poles. |
| | D) | is due to the moon's gravitational pull. |
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18 | |
The longitude exactly on the opposite side of the earth from Greenwich, England, is |
| | A) | 0°. |
| | B) | 90°E. |
| | C) | 90°W. |
| | D) | 180°. |
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19 | |
A latitude of 80° north corresponds to |
| | A) | the north pole. |
| | B) | the region in the tropics, near but not exactly at the equator. |
| | C) | an area in the arctic, but not exactly at the north pole. |
| | D) | the prime meridian. |
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20 | |
The earth is approximately, though not perfectly, spherical because |
| | A) | gravity tends to squeeze any planet into a spherical shape, causing bumps and depressions, such as mountains and ocean basins, to smooth out. |
| | B) | constant tidal changes pushing the earth one way and then another even it out into a sphere. |
| | C) | the spinning of earth naturally drives it into a sphere, otherwise it might well be elliptical in shape. |
| | D) | a spherical earth encounters less friction as it orbits around the sun. |
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21 | |
Tides occur because |
| | A) | the moon, and to a lesser extent the sun, attract different parts of the earth to different extents at different times. |
| | B) | the moon is unstable and continuously “falling” toward the earth. |
| | C) | the spinning of the earth cause the water slosh in the basins of the oceans. |
| | D) | Mercury and Venus daily modulate the gravitational field of the sun reaching the earth. |
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22 | |
Neap tides |
| | A) | occur only when the moon is a full moon. |
| | B) | occur only when the moon is on the opposite side of the earth from the place under consideration. |
| | C) | are tides that are especially high, and always at least 10 meters high by definition. |
| | D) | occur when the tide-raising forces of the sun and moon partially cancel out. |
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23 | |
All of the following are basic units used in the International System except |
| | A) | meter. |
| | B) | joule. |
| | C) | pound. |
| | D) | second. |
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24 | |
The International System (SI) |
| | A) | uses units derived from the older metric system and therefore is commonly referred to as the metric system still. |
| | B) | is commonly used in many European countries, but has yet to be adopted by the scientific community. |
| | C) | is less accurate than the tried and true British system of units and measurements. |
| | D) | is flawed because it does not distinguish between masses and weights. |
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25 | |
Which of the following is the longest? |
| | A) | 20 cm |
| | B) | 20 inches |
| | C) | 200 mm |
| | D) | .02 m |
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