Solar-System Formation & Orbital Dynamics Spring Final Reveiw

Fill in the blank: ________ is gas and dust that help form stars and planets using gravitational forces to bind material together.

• Solar nebula

• Comet tail

• Asteroid belt

• Black hole

Fill in the blank: ________ is the idea that stars and planetary systems form from gravitationally collapsing collections of gas and dust.

• Nebular theory

• Big Bang theory

• Plate tectonics

• Quantum mechanics

Fill in the blank: ________ is the concept that as something spins, it maintains the idea that an object in motion tends to stay in motion. For example, when an ice skater pulls their arms in while spinning, they speed up. When they throw their arms out, they slow down, but everything is rotating in the same direction.

• Conservation of angular momentum

• Newton's first law

• Thermal expansion

• Electromagnetic induction

Fill in the blank: ________ forms as a nebula collapses due to a massive object (planet or central star) rotating, bringing the cloud of gas and dust into a disk making it easier for material to clump together.

• Planetary disk

• Asteroid belt

• Comet tail

• Black hole

Fill in the blank: ________ is the idea of mass moving in a circle.

• Angular momentum

• Linear velocity

• Potential energy

• Thermal expansion

Fill in the blank: ________ is the inner most planet in our solar system. It has no significant atmosphere. It is the most eccentric in its orbit of any planet. Terrestrial material and not that much larger than our moon.

• Mercury

• Venus

• Mars

• Earth

Fill in the blank: ________ describes how circular or elongated an orbit is. e=0 means a circular orbit.

• Eccentricity

• Inclination

• Velocity

• Mass

Fill in the blank: ________ is a collection of rocky material that sits between Mars and Jupiter. It holds less overall mass than our moon.

• Asteroid belt

• Kuiper belt

• Oort cloud

• Van Allen belt

Fill in the blank: ________ is a collection of dwarf planets (Pluto etc) and icy material that sits well outside the orbits of Neptune and Uranus.

• Kuiper Belt

• Asteroid Belt

• Oort Cloud

• Main Belt

Fill in the blank: ________ helped verify Kepler’s Laws of planetary motion. Newton was the first to really describe what an orbit was - falling without hitting the planet.

• Newton’s law of gravity

• Einstein’s theory of relativity

• Galileo’s law of inertia

• Copernicus’s heliocentric model