Lesson Review 20 Archive A

                                           A lesson Plan........Sunday March 26, 2000

                                                       Cleophas Mike Mc Alpin

                                                                                Tutor

           A Trip to the Griffith Park Observatory.....Part 1  The Amazing Parabola: Below   What Does the Future Hold?

March 26, 2000:   Complete the questions and problems below.   communications satellites

1. The Observatory is located in the________________________ _________________________________. Point out several landmarks out in the distance. (go to roof for panoramic view of the Los Angeles basin.)

2. What time does the Sundial read that is out in front of the building?

3. How many different sections does the Observatory have?

4. What is the significance of the spheres that swing from the ceiling? ( the steel spheres that periodically knock over blocks as they swing)

5. The steel balls show what? (the balls that follow a spiral path as they travel down the incline.)

6. What is your weight on the moon? Jupiter? Earth?

7. How many elements are there?

8. What are spectral lines?

9. Draw the spectral lines of neon? Of helium? Of krypton, Of argon?

10. How many elements are liquid at room temperature?

11. Write down 20 of the elements and their symbols.

12. What is the speed of light?

13. What is a light-year?

14. What galaxy do we live in?

15. What is a radio telescope and what is a "pulsar"?

16. Name all of the planets in our solar system.

17. Which planets have rings? Which have moons? Which have the most moons?

18. Name the moons of Jupiter. Name some of the moons of Saturn.

19. What are constellations and name at least 5?

20. What are suns and name our nearest galaxy. How many light-years away is it?

21. What is the Red Planet and why is it red?

22. What is the Clark Orbit? What is it used for? See answer under "parabolas").

23. Describe a Tesla Coil.

24. Draw a picture of Ursha Major. What does the name mean?

25. What is Orion? Andromeda? 

26. Why is the Earth's moon pockmarked?

27. What is the Asteroid Belt?

28. How fast must a rocket travel to leave the earth's gravitational pull?

29. Did you know that each and every square inch of your body had 14.7 pounds pressing down on it? What  is this pressure called?

30. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second! Will we ever be able to travel at this speed? What does E = MC^2 mean? Who was Albert Einstein and what did he theorize?

31. The acceleration due to gravity is 32.2 ft per second per second or 32.2 feet per second squared. What does this mean? Ans. A falling body will increase in speed 32.2 feet per second every second. Example: first second...32.2 feet/second...next second..64.4 feet/second...etc. 

32. Sound travels at approximately 1100 feet per second. Is this considered fast compared to the speed of light?

33. Some stars are 1500 light-years away from Earth and some are millions of light-years away. Give an approximation of a 1500 light-year distance. This is a "gimmie" and will be answered now:

Light travels faster than anything in our Universe (that we are aware of). It travels at the awesome speed of 186,000 miles in one second! That means that a beam of light could circle the Earth seven times in just a single second! The distance in miles that light travels in one year is called a light-year. Remember, a light-year is a "distance", and not a "time".

Distance in miles ( 1500 light-years) = 186,000 miles/second x 60 seconds/minute x 60 minutes/hour x 24 hours/day x 365 days/year x 1500 = an astronomical number of miles. Can you write the number of zeroes in this very, very great distance? What about scientific notation? 1.86 x 10^5 x 6.0 x 10^1 x 6.0 x 10^1 x 2.4 x 10^1 x 3.65 x 10^2 x 1.5 x 10^3 = 880 x 10^13 =

8,800,000,000,000,000 miles! = 1500 light-years

                   The Amazing Parabola.....To Jarrell (13)

Don't forget to rotate our graph so that the parabola "holds water". (It is easier for me to place it on a horizontal axis... "x" and "y" are not along the proper axis in this case). Oh well, Communications Engineers know how to design parabolic dishes. No wonder there are so many radio telescopes out there to listen to the heavens. 

Those communications satellites that circle the Earth at a distance of 22,000 miles or 36,000 kilometers (Clarke Orbit) are in lock-step with the rotation of the Earth. There are a lot of them circling the earth ( 3 degrees apart... please, gentlemen) at this stage of the game. 

No need to rotate our earth- based parabolas to match the speed of the satellites. Search the Internet for "Clarke Orbit", so named after Arthur C. Clarke...Science writer.