Questions for Test #2

1. What did Johannes Kepler do to improve Copernicus' heliocentric system?
2. Draw a diagram depicting retrograde motion in the heliocentric system.
3. Draw a diagram depicting why Venus and Mercury are always close to the sun in the heliocentric system.
4. Briefly, what is Ockham's Razor?
5. Give a free-hand drawing of an ellipse and label (approximately) the location of the focci.
6. Who is credited with inventing the telescope?
7. Draw a diagram and define the focal length of a lens.
8. According to Seeing and Believing, before 1409 world maps produced in Europe were usually very simple – a circle divided into three parts with a “T”. What significant publication found in Constantinople in 1409 changed all that?
9. Who is often designated as the "Father of Science" or the "Father of Philosophy"?
10. What major branch of mathematics was invented in the Arabic speaking Islamic world during the medieval period? What significant feature of our number system (known to the Maya but not the Romans) also came to Europe from the Arabic speaking world?
11. Name three things that Galileo observed with his telescope that contradicted the teachings of Aristotle and most other ancient Greek philosophers.
12. In which era (pre-classical, classical antiquity, medieval, or renaissance) did Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler and Galileo live?
13. What were the three land masses of the Earth (we would call them continents) known to medieval Europe?
14. In what fundamental way are Newton's laws different from Kepler's?
15. What two motions is the Earth required to have in the heliocentric system?
16. State Kepler's three laws of planetary motion.
17. How did Ptolemy explain retrograde motion?
18. Describe Aristarchus' method for estimating the size of the Moon.
19. Describe Aristarchus' method for estimating the distance to the Sun.
20. Describe Erathosthenes' method for estimating the circumference of the Earth.
21. List the two things for which Hipparchus of Nicaea is remembered.
22. Give two pieces of evidence used by Aristotle to argue that the earth is round.
23. What evidence does Aristotle cite to argue that the earth is of no great size compared to the universe?
24. Be sure you know “Galileo’s Greatest Hits” (from the notes).
25. For whom did Galileo originally want to name the four moons of Jupiter?
26. State Newton's three laws of motion.
27. State Newton's law of universal gravity.
28. The following diagram shows the orbit of earth and the orbit of Mars. With Earth in the position shown, where is Mars when, from the viewpoint of the Earth, it begins retrograde motion?

29. How did Tycho's model of the solar system differ from Copernicus'?
30. Who proposed a heliocentric system in ancient times (around 300 B.C.)?
31. How does the geocentric system explain the day, the year and the month?
32. How does the heliocentric system explain the day, the year and the month?

Longer answers are required for the following. You might be asked to choose one of these to answer.

33. What two aspects of Copernicus’ heliocentric theory made it attractive to scholars? What objections (technical, not religious) were raised to this theory?
34. What were the main issues in the battle between the Catholic Church and Galileo?
35. According to Newton, what holds the earth and the planets in orbit around the sun? Why is no power source needed to keep the earth and planets moving in their orbits?