Space Study Guide Review
Science
Study guide review videos about the space
Hey guys, mister sand tree here. Welcome to another exciting edition of our study guide review videos. We are in unit 6 space, so get ready to check your study guides. Here we go. In question number one, you're comparing the geocentric theory and the heliocentric theory. Two ideas of how this solar system is organized. In the geocentric theory, which is what we used to believe, it was that earth was the center of our solar system and the entire universe. So earth was in the middle and everything else in space were revolved around earth. I have a picture of that over here.
Two astronomers helped to develop this theory we had Aristotle, who came up with it originally. And Ptolemy, who used geometry to kind of prove those ideas, but in the end it turned out that they were incorrect because we discovered something called the heliocentric theory. Which said that the sun was the center of our solar system. And that's a good distinction. This is just the center of our solar system, not the entire universe. There's a whole bunch of other stuff out there. Copernicus was the guy who originally thought up this idea and later on Galileo collected a lot of information to help prove this idea. In this study guide review video, I decided to do include some astronauts that are doing cool stuff in space.
This is a real cool guy. His name's Chris Hadfield. He spent a good amount of time on the International Space Station. Here he is playing with some water. Question number two, you had to take a look at your history of space exploration timeline and come up with an explanation about how space exploration has changed over time, keeping in mind these questions up here. So what do you notice overall? What are some ways that exploration has changed and what is different about how we explore space now compared to what we did in the past. And so you could have come up with an answer like this. Space exploration has changed drastically over time.
Scientists started out using observations, aka their own eyes, to look into space. But with the development of the telescope and other technology, we have been able to explore further into space. And so if you don't have something exactly like that, that's okay. Really, the important thing here is that it's changed a lot and the development of technologies are what have really pushed us forward in our understanding of the universe. Ask your teacher if you're unsure whether your answer is good or not. Number three, why do all the planets orbit around the sun? This is because of the sun and its gravity. It has a massive gravitational force, and this gravity is what is able to hold all the planets and everything else in our solar system in orbit around the sun.
Number four, you had to define an astronomical unit. And you could have gotten this from your word list or the quizlet, but it is the average distance between the earth and the sun. And we use it to measure out the distance between all sorts of objects in our solar system. The abbreviation for astronomical unit is AU and one AU is equal to 150 million kilometers. So it's a pretty long distance. If you haven't figured out already, this is in fact mister hein, not mister centri. Although I hear many of you often get as confused. We are in fact separate people. Or are we? I don't know. Have you ever seen us in the same room before? Continuing on. In the next question you had to put in some information about the planets in our solar system. Plus our favorite dwarf planet. So in order of distance from the sun, we would start with mercury, the closest planet.
You had to use a mnemonic device, either the one you've got in class or when you came up with on your own. As a reminder, that's a phrase to help you remember the order of a series of words such as the planets here. So in this case, we used my very excellent mother just served us nachos with the M in my matching up with the M and mercury. Mercury's distance from the sun in astronomical units is .4 AU. Then you had to put down at least one identifying characteristic. For mercury, you could have said that it's a rocky planet. You could extend that it is the closest to the sun. You could have said there is no atmosphere. It is covered in craters. It is gray, anything. About mercury for that lust column.
Second planet is Venus and the word in our pneumonic cure is very. It is .7 astronomical units away from the sun, and it is another rocky planet. It rotates backwards. And it is the hottest planet in our solar system. Many people often think mercury would be the hottest since it's closer to the sun, but Venus is very thick atmosphere that traps a lot of heat on the planet. Third planet is us, earth, in our mnemonic device that is excellent. It is exactly one astronomical unit away from the sun because that's how we came up with the astronomical unit. Earth is a rocky planet. It is about 70% covered in water, and it is the only planet. We know of in the solar system that has life. Mars is number four, the word in our mnemonic device here is mother. It is one and a half AU away from the sun. And some characteristics of Mars, it is rocky. And it's surface contains rust and iron, which gives it its red color.
Our next planet is Jupiter. In the device we would have the word just, it is 5.2 astronomical units away from the sun, so over 5 times the distance that earth is. It's pretty far away. It is our first guest giant. It is the largest planet in our solar system, and it has a cool feature called the great red spot, which is this huge gigantic storm, bigger than earth. That has been going on for quite some time. After that, we have Saturn, the word here in our device is served. It is 9 and a half astronomical units away from the sun. It is another gas giant. It has those big iconic rings that are made out of ice and rock, orbiting around it. And it has a crazy amount of moons over 60 moons for Saturn. Next is Uranus. The word here is us, it is 19.2 astronomical units away from the sun. We're getting really far away from the sun here.
It's another gas giant. It is a nice blue color. Mostly because of a high concentration of methane gas. And it spins on the plane of its orbit, which means it's kind of spinning sideways. Compared to the rest of the planets. And finally, the final planet in our solar system is Neptune, the word here is not chose, sometimes people say noodles. It is 30.6 AU away. Very far out there. It's not a guest giant. It has a bluish green color, and again, this color comes because there's a lot of methane gas in its atmosphere. Now we don't want to forget our dwarf planets. Pluto is one of them. And it is 39 and a half astronomical units away. One identifying characteristic here is that it is a dwarf planet. Speaking of George planets, in our next question, you had to say, what's the difference between a planet and a dwarf planet? And that is that dwarf planets unlike actual planets can not move other objects like asteroids away from its orbital neighborhood. What this means is that dwarf planets do not have their own orbit. They share it with a whole bunch of different objects. If we have the sun in the center of the solar system, a regular planet like earth, orbits around, and it's the only thing in that orbit.
Moving around the sun. If you go out to a spot like series, a series is in the asteroid belt. So it's orbiting outside of the earth in between Mars and Jupiter. But also in its orbit are all the other asteroids in the asteroid belt. So it is sharing its orbit with a whole bunch of different objects because it doesn't have enough gravity to push them out of the way. Number 8, two characteristics for Planet Earth that make it different from any other planet that we know of. And that would be that it has an atmosphere, which makes it suitable for life. And also that is 70% covered by water. We're also the only planet we know of that has all three phases of water naturally occurring. Solid liquid and gas. And in number 9, you're asked that to fill in the blank earth spins on an imaginary line called its. And that would be axis and a special note here.
The axis is tilted. Number ten, you had to compare rotation and revolution. So rotation is the earth spinning on that imaginary line that we called the axis. It takes 24 hours and that is what causes our day and night. Then you had to draw an example. I put a picture here of a basketball spending on someone's finger because that's a nice way to show rotation. Revolution is the earth orbiting around the sun, moving in that nice curved path around the sun. It takes 365 days, or a year. And this is why we have our seasons. Winter spring, summer and fall, all thanks to revolution and the tilt of the axis. The picture I drew here are electrons moving in nice circular paths around the nucleus of an atom.
One trick that I've heard if you're having trouble remembering the difference between rotation and revolution is that if you think of revolution, which is the longer process since it takes a year, you can compare it to a Revolutionary War, which also took a longer time. Number 11, you have a diagram here and you had to make an approximate time for this point here on earth that the arrow is pointing to. And so that would be about 12 a.m. midnight. We know this because it is on the night side of earth facing away from the sun. And it is opposite the side that is directly facing the earth sun. Which would be about noon because when it's nude, the sun is directly overhead. And then you have to talk about two reasons the earth has seasons. And so as we said, just a little bit earlier, it's because of the tilt of earth's axis. And from its revolution or orbit around the sun. You have to explain that and you could say something like this.
Earth's revolution places it at different positions around the sun. The tilt allows different hemisphere to receive more or less direct sunlight. For example, when the northern hemisphere, where we live, it is tilted toward the sun. It receives more direct sunlight, and so it experiences summer. In the southern hemisphere, at the same time, it would be tilted away from the sun, which makes it receive less direct sunlight. And causes the season of winter to happen. Question 13, almost there. And this question you had to say, which seasons are happening at various locations in this diagram. So starting with a, a is currently experiencing summer. Because this hemisphere is tilted towards the sun. And so it is getting the most direct sunlight.
Over here at position B, we have winter in the northern hemisphere, because it is pointing a wave from the sun and getting indirect sunlight. For C and D, we have transitional seasons, C is spring because the northern hemisphere is moving from winter over here to summer over here. And D would be fall. Because the southern hemisphere is changing from summer to winter. In question 14, you had to draw in and name the phases of the moon starting with Newman, which was already done for you. The new moon is completely shaded in after that we'll start to see it a little bit of light on the right side of the moon. And that is called our waxing Crescent waxing because it's getting larger. After that, we would see the first quarter. Remember, we can only see half of the moon and since half of his in in shade, this would be one quarter of the moon right here.
The next phase is called a waxing gibbous with almost all of the moon in light on the right side. After that, we have a full moon where we can see the entire face of the moon that faces us. Then the moon starts getting smaller. So we start to call it a waning moon and our first phase here is the waning gibbous. After that is our third quarter with the light now on the left half of the moon. And finally, we would have a waning Crescent, just a little sliver of light on the left side before it returns to a new moon. And finally, our last couple questions are asking about eclipses and tides. In 15, you had to draw a diagram of the two types of eclipses that can happen. So we have what we call a solar eclipse. This happens when the moon moves in between the sun and the earth. The moon will cast a shadow on the earth blocking out the sun for a short period of time. We're actually going to have one of these occurring in August. So make sure you look for that when we get to summer.
The other type is called a lunar eclipse and this happens when the earth moves between the sun and the moon. The earth will cast a shadow on the moon. Blocking out part or all of it. Number 16 asks what causes the tide, and this is the gravitational pull between the earth, the moon, and the sun. 17 says, which has a greater effect on the tides, the sun or the moon, and why? And this is going to be the moon. Even though the sun is a lot larger than the moon, the moon is much closer to earth, so it has a greater effect on our tides. And finally, in the last question, you had to draw a diagram of a spring tide and a neat tide. And so spring tides can occur when the moon is either at the new moon. Or the full moon position, so you can try and moon over here. So the sun earth and moon line up in a nice line. This causes our highest high tides and our lowest low tide.
So we see the biggest difference from low to high tide. Neap tides occur either at first quarter or third quarter. And these caused low high tides and high low tides, and so we see the least difference between our low and high tide. All right, and that's it. I will leave you with this fine space related video. And good luck on your DK, ask your teacher if you have any more questions, make sure you study. And have a great day guys.