Exam 4: Gravity and Orbits

In the absence of air friction, a 0.001-kg piece of paper and a 0.1-kg notebook are dropped from the same height and allowed to fall to the ground. How do their accelerations compare?

What two pieces of information would you need to obtain about one of the moons of the planet Jupiter in order to measure the mass of Jupiter? What formulae would you use to determine the mass?

If the distance between the Earth and Sun were cut in half, the gravitational force between these two objects would:

Because of the tidal force between the Earth and Moon:

The tidal force on the Earth due to the Moon is about two times stronger than that due to the Sun.

The force of gravity that an object has is directly proportional to its:

Figure 2 -According to Figure 2, neap tides occur when the lunar and solar tides _________, resulting in _________ tides.

If a satellite sent to Mars is designed to return a rock sample to Earth, how fast must the satellite be launched from its surface in order to escape Mars's gravity? For reference, Mars has a mass of 6 * 10²³ kg and a radius of 3,400 km.

Explain what the terms circular velocity and escape velocity mean. Give the formula for each and explain what each mathematical symbol represents.

How would the acceleration due to gravity on a planet that is 16 times as massive as Earth and 4 times its radius compared to the acceleration of gravity on the Earth?

Lunar tides are approximately _________ solar tides.

The only acceleration you experience on a merry-go-round is when it starts or stops.

_________ may have been instrumental in shaping the interface between Earth's land and oceans where the chemistry needed to develop life may have occurred.

In the figure shown below, the person on the Moon is standing at the same location on the Moon as the Moon rotates around the Earth. Based on this, we see that the Moon's rotational period is equal to:

If you weighed 150 lbs on Earth, what would you weigh on Mars? For reference, Mars has a mass that is 0.1 times the Earth's mass and Mars has a radius that is 0.5 times the Earth's radius.

Which one of the statements below about a planet's Roche limit is FALSE?

What is the escape velocity from Mars if its mass is 6 * 10²³ kg and its radius is 3,400 km?

Suppose you are suddenly transported to a planet that had 1/4 the radius of Earth but the same mass as the Earth. Your weight would _________ by a factor of _________.

The moon keeps the same hemisphere facing the Earth because the _________ is equal to the _________.

Which is larger, the tidal force on the Earth due to the Moon or the tidal force on the Earth due to the Sun, and by approximately how much? Explain conceptually why this is possible given that the gravitational force of the Sun on the Earth is 200 times larger than the gravitational force of the Moon on the Earth.