Midterm Exam ESCI 100: note slight wording changes highlighted in yellow
Due 9 AM on Friday, October 31
Exam is to be submitted electronically (as a single .doc, .docx, or .rtf file attached to an email). If you use Works or Word Perfect be sure to convert the file to the correct format. I cannot open .wps files! Your exam is not considered to be submitted until you receive an email back from me saying it was received and I can open your file. Please put "ESCI 100 midterm" in the subject line so I can fish exams out of my junkmail box easily. You can avoid this if you use your official CCSU email address to submit the exam (rather than gmail, aol, hotmail, etc).
The academic honesty form is to be submitted as a hard copy signed before October 31. Read it carefully, because you will be held to the contents.
All questions are worth equal points. You need to answer all parts of all questions.
1) If you've ever received an email from me, you've seen my sigfile:
"Of star dust are we made and by starlight we live." -- Allie Vibert Douglas (1894-1988), Dean of Women and Professor of Astronomy, Queen's University, Ontario
You should now understand what it means. Explain its astronomical significance (both parts) based on what we've discussed in class. It's okay to be philosophical as well.
2) In The Magician's Nephew, the first of his Chronicles of Narnia series, author C.S. Lewis describes a dying planet as seen through the eyes of a young boy:
Low down and near the horizon hung a great, red sun, far bigger than our sun. Digory felt at once that it was older than ours: a sun near the end of its life, weary of looking down upon that world.... And on the earth, in every direction, as far as the eye could reach, there spread a vast city in which there was no living thing to be seen. And all the temples, towers, palaces, pyramids, and bridges cast long, disastrous-looking shadows in the light of that withered sun. Once a great river had flowed through the city, but the water had long since vanished, and there was now only a wide ditch of grey dust. (p. 40)
Comment on Lewis's astronomical knowledge as demonstrated in this quotation. Is his description scientifically correct? Connect this passage to specific events in the future of our sun.
3) Congratulations! You have been appointed to a special subcommittee of the Nobel Prize Commission. Your task is to choose one of the following overlooked people for a special retroactive Nobel Prize. There is going to be a fierce debate amongst the committee members, because all are deserving in their own right. Select a candidate and write a 400-500 word (no longer and no shorter!) argument as to why they are the most deserving. Stick to the importance of their work rather than how they were treated by their colleagues. Note that there is no right answer, just more thoughtful arguments and less thoughtful arguments.
Bell, Jocelyn (for the discovery of pulsars)
Leavitt, Henrietta (for the discovery of the period-luminosity relationship for Cepheids)
Maury, Antonia (for the discovery of the c-characteristic in stellar spectra)
4) Select one of the following "revolutions" in cosmology and discuss how the scientific method was (or wasn't) correctly applied, and the effects social pressures, prejudices, and/or religion played:
The Copernican revolution (Artistotle --> Galileo/Newton)
The Great Debate (Newton/Olbers Paradox --> Hubble)
Big Bang versus Steady State (Lemaitre --> Penzias and Wilson)
5) Authors J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis utilized singing as the method of creation in their imaginary universes (Middle-earth and Narnia, respectively). Discuss this in terms of its parallels/connections with
a) the standard model of real-world creation myths
b) ancient-middle ages scientific cosmologies
c) modern cosmological modelsNote: you do not have to know anything about these works to answer this question.