with mr mackenzie
mrmackenzie I’ve attached a set of notes to help with your revision for the Our Dynamic Universe resit on Tuesday. Remember that the resit paper will have knowledge questions only, so focus on the unit content during your revision rather than practising numerical problems.
Thanks to Mr Noble for sharing his ODU notes.
If you’re doing some last minute revision, here are some extra notes on the first few topics from unit 1.
Twinkle, twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Giant thermonuclear reaction;
Held by gravitational attraction.
Twinkle, twinkle little star,
You look so small ’cause you’re so far.As you burn through constant fusion,
Your twinkle’s just an optical illusion.
That happens when your light gets near;
distorted by our atmosphere.
Twinkle, twinkle little star,
spreading light and heat so far.As you use up fuel you’ll grow,
and give off a scarlet glow;
Maybe you’ll go supernova,
exploding elements all over.
Now I know just what you are;
and I know I’m made of stars.
Where does the Sun get its energy? A straightforward question but physicists struggled to find an answer until the 1920s, when Eddington suggested that nuclear fusion might be responsible.
A star is drawing on some vast reservoir of energy by means unknown to us. This reservoir can scarcely be other than the subatomic energy which, it is known exists abundantly in all matter; we sometimes dream that man will one day learn how to release it and use it for his service. The store is well nigh inexhaustible, if only it could be tapped. There is sufficient in the Sun to maintain its output of heat for 15 billion years. — Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
Our Sun is a typical yellow star, so its emission would be represented by the middle star in this image.
The colour of a star also tells us something about the expected behaviour of a star, it’s lifetime, and destiny. This is achieved by plotting stars on a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. More about HR diagrams here.
This video clip looks at how the stars are arranged on the HR diagram.
Hertzsprung Russell diagram from mr mackenzie on Vimeo.
While some HR diagrams use temperature along the x-axis, others use star classification.
There’s a nice guide to particle physics on The Particle Adventure web site. The site has it’s own free apps for android & apple devices that are worth installing.
Here’s Prof Cox with a two part summary of particle physics.
and a short video with just the quarks
The video below was made before the Higgs boson was confirmed, so please bear that in mind. It’s still a nice video though.
Learn about the world’s largest neutrino detector in Antarctica.
It seems general relativity is 100 years old today. We’ve been struggling a bit with this topic, so I thought these videos might help.
Why Einstein is such a big deal from Fusion Media Network on Vimeo.
General relativity explained in under 3 minutes from Fusion Media Network on Vimeo.
Science Museum – Einstein’s Cosmos from ORDER Productions on Vimeo.
The cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) is radiation left over from the big bang. When the universe was very young, just as space became transparent to light, electromagnetic energy would have propagated through space at a much shorter wavelength. Nowadays, the temperature of space has fallen to approximately 2.7 K (that’s 2.7 K above absolute zero!) and, using Wien’s Law, we can confirm that the peak wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation is so long that the background radiation lies in the microwave portion of the em spectrum.
The CMB was first detected in 1964 by Richard Woodrow Wilson and Arno Allan Penzias, who worked at Bell Laboratories in the USA.
Astronomers often refer to the colour of a star, which seems a bit odd because we mostly see stars as white twinkly objects. However, even with the naked eye, we can look closely at certain stars and detect a hint of colour – just look at this image of the Orion constellation. As we view him, the left shoulder has a red coloured star, while the right shoulder and right foot appear to be blue.
Now click on the image to see the same view at much higher resolution. In the hi-res photo, look at the stars in the background. They’re not all white!
What can the colour of a star tell us?
We’re having a quick look (get it?) at Special Relativity before tackling General Relativity. Here are some videos to get you thinking.
A Tale of Two Twins from Oliver Luo on Vimeo.
Sorry, folks. I forgot to post the solutions to the last homework exercise. See attached file which also includes the questions.
