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73 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
What is science? |
a way to learn about nature through constant trial and error experiments. |
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Practical benifits of astronomy in antiquity |
time keeping, keeping track of seasons and navigation |
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What could ancient central african's do with astronomy that was so impressive? |
they could predict rainfall patterns by making careful observations of the moon. In tropical regins where there are distinct rainy and dry seasons the orientation of the cresent moon can be used to predict how much rainfall should be expected over coming days and weeks |
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How does astronomy affect the measurement of time? |
day length is the time it takes the sun to make one full circuit of the sky. |
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what were the seven days of the week named after? |
seven ancient planets. sun,moon, mercury, venus, mars, jupitur, saturn. |
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What were some ways in which people used astronomy to determine the time of day? |
many cultures probably used sticks and shadows they cast as simple sundials.
at night people could estimate time from the position and phase of the moon or by observing the constellations visable at a particular time. |
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How did Egyptians create the first clock? how does this clock reflect modern timekeeping? |
cataloged where particular stars appeared in sky at various times of night throught the year. the catalog could use star clock to estimate the time of night.
Egyptians divided day and night into twelve equal parts each. anti meridiam, post meridiam. |
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1500 egypt |
egyptians abandon star clocks and use clocks that measure time by the flow of water through an opening like an hourglass. ADVantage is they worked even when it was cloudy. |
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Templo Mayor |
twin temples on a falt topped pyramid. sun rises through notch between the temples on teh equinoces. |
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Why do many cultures align their building sand streets with the directions? n,e,s,w |
made it easier to keep track of the changing rise and set positions of the sun over the course of a year. |
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What is the sun dagger? |
made by pueblo people in chaco canyon, new mexico.
three large slabs of rock lie in front of a carved spiral in such a way that they produced special patterns of light and shadow at different times of year. |
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what is a solar calender |
a calendar that is sychronized with the seasons so that seasonal events such as the solstices and equonoxes occur on approximately the same dates each year.
currently used |
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ehat is the lunar calander? |
calenders whos aim is to say syncronized with the mon and it's 29 1/2 day cycl of phases. this is so the moon phase is always the same on the first day of each month. |
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metonic cycle |
19 year son a solar calander is almost precisely 235 months on a lunar calender. as a result, the lunar phases repeat on the same date every 19 years. |
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archaeoastronomy |
peicing together astrnomical achievements by studying the physical evidence they left behind. |
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nazca ines |
point to places where the sun or bright stars rise at particular times of year. Speculation. some people think they may be constellations recognized by the people who lived in the region. |
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What are the three major greek innovations that helped pave the way for modern science? |
tradition of trying to understand nature without relying on supernationral explaniations and of working communally to debate and challenge eachothers ideas.
second the greeks used mathematics to give precision to their ideas.
greeks also saw the power of reasoning from observations. they understood that an explanation could not be right if it disagreed with observed facts. |
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Models of nature |
a conceptual representation created to explain and predict observed phenomena |
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Alexander the great |
conquest spread creek knowledge in 356-323 bc. |
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Where was scientific progress occurring durring the dark ages? |
islamic scholars sought knowlege in hopes to better understand the wisdom of allah. |
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house of wisdom |
employed jews, christians and muslims to work togehter in scholarly pursuits using the translated gree scientific manuscripts as building blocks. Most official names of constellations and stars come from arabic becous of eht ework of the scholars at baghdad. were in touch with scholars in baghdad and china, india. |
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how did the knowlege of the dark ages learned in the islamic world travel to europe? |
when the byzantine capital of constantinople fell to the turks in 1453 many eastern scholars headed west to europe carrying with them the knowlege that helped ignite the european renaissance. |
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Greek Geocentric model of the cosmos |
a spherical earth at the center of the universe. |
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Thales |
first to scientifically try to explain what hte universe is made of. philosophized that it was a flat disk, floating in a sea of infinite ocean. |
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anaximander |
thorized that earth floated in empty space surrounded by a sphere of stars and two separate rings along which teh sun and moon travel.
first to imagine earth to be cilinder- deducted this due to changes in teh constellations with latitude. |
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Pythagoras |
c. 560-480 bc. greek. taught that earht was round. envisiond earth as a sphere floating in teh center of teh celestial sphere. philisophical motivations. Considered spheres to be gemetrically perfect. |
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plato |
theororized all heavenly objects move in perfect circles at constant speeds and therefore must reside on huge spheres encircling earth. belief in perfection influenced astronomical models for the next 2000 years. |
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Exodus |
created a mode in which teh sun, the moon, and the planets each ahd their own spheres nested within several otehr spheres. individually teh nested spheres turned in perfect circles.
exodus was able to make them work together in a way that reproduced many of the observed motions of the sun, moon and planets. |
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Aristotle. 384-322 bc. |
his model of the universe envisioned all spheres responsible for celestial motion were transparent and interconnected like the gears of a giant machine. earths position was explained as a consequence as gravety. argued gravity pulled heavier things towards the center of the universe. |
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Ptolemy's syntesis |
claudius ptolemy placed earth at the center of the universe. to explain retrograde motion ptolemy suggested each planet moved around earth on a small circle that turned upon a larger circle.
adapted and syntesized earlier ideas into a single system that agreed quite well with the astronomical observations available at the time. produced a model that could correctly forecast future planetary positions to within a few degrees of arc.
in arrabic they gave his book teh title almagest. |
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deferent and epicycle |
deferent is the larger circle in which the smaller circle, the epicycle, turns on. |
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hipparchus |
developed the circle upon circle idea into a model that could predict pletary positions. |
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Copernicus |
born 1473. tried aristachus's sun-centered idea. developed simple geometric relationships that allowed him to calculate each planet's orbital period aroudn the sun and its relative distance from the sun in terms of eart-sun distance.
published concerning the revolutions of the heavenly spheres on the day he died in 1543. |
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Tycho |
1546-1601 observed a new star in 1572, nova, by masuring its parallax and comparing it to the parallax of the moon. concluded it was much further away than the moon. [it was actually a supernova]
advocated a model where the sun orbits earth and all otehr planets orbit the sun. |
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Kepler |
Employee of Tycho. Small descrepencies between his observations and tychos led him to abandon the idea of circlular orbits.
suggested that planetary motion might be the result of a force from the sun. |
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ellipse |
An ellipse is (sort of) an oval shape, with two interior points called foci (singular: focus), a long axis (the major axis), a short axis (the minor axis), and a center (which should under no circumstances be confused with a focus). |
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semi-major axis |
Half of the major axis, also the average sun-planet distance. |
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eccentricity |
he number that characterizes how flat the ellipse looks compared to a perfect circle. |
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What are keplers three lawas of planetary motion |
the orbit of each planet around the sun is an ellipse with the sun at one focus. Planets distance fromt eh sun varies during its orbit.
as a planet moves around its orbit it sweeks out equal areas in equal times. planet moves a greater distance when it is near the closest point to the sun and does the same when near the furthest.
more distante planets orbit the sun at slower average speeds, obeying a precise mathematical relationship |
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Perihelium vrs aphelion |
closest point of orbit to the sun furthest point of orbit from the sun. The semimajor axis is the average distance from the sun. the planet moves faster when it is closer to the sun, slower when it is further. |
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How did Galileo solidify the copernican revolution? |
1564-1642. a moving ball remains in motion unless a force stops it. |
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Stellar Parallax |
theory by Tycho. Stellar parallax is so small (as to be unobservable until the 19th century) that it was used as a scientific argument against heliocentrism during the early modern age. the effect would be undetectable if the stars were far enough away, but for various reasons such gigantic distances involved seemed entirely implausible: it was one of Tycho Brahe's principal objections to Copernican heliocentrism that in order for it to be compatible with the lack of observable stellar parallax, there would have to be an enormous and unlikely void between the orbit of Saturn and the eighth sphere (the fixed stars).[4] |
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What were galileo's earliest discoveries through the telescope? |
he observed four moons clearly orbiting jupitor, not earth. observed venus goes through phases in a way that makes sense only if it orbits the sun and not earth |
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What is Galileo's history with the church? |
ordered to recant his claim that earth orbits the sun. at nearly 70, and afraid he did as told.
was formally vindicated in 1992. |
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What are the three hallmarks of science? |
modern science seeks explanations for observed phenomena that rely solely on natural causes. science progresses through the creation and testing of models of nature that explain the observations as simply as possible a scientific model must make testable predictions about natural phenomena that will force us to revise or abandon the model if the predictions do not agree with observations. |
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Occam's Razor |
The idea that scienctists should prefer the simpler of two models that agree equally well with obasrevations |
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Verifiable observations |
having the option to varify scientific testimonies yourself using verifiable evidence. |
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Psudoscience |
false science-claims about the natural world that seem to be based on observational evidence but do not treat evidence in a truely scientific way. |
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Objectivity in science |
all people shoudl be able to find teh same results. |
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Scientific theory |
a model makes predictions that survive repeated and varied testing. must be supported by a large, compelling body of evidence. |
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How is astrology different than astronomy? |
astrology believes that various positions of the sun, moon, planets, stars, ect influence human events. |
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In what ways do all humans use scientific thinking? |
scientific thinking relies on teh same type of trial and error thinking that we use in our every day lives but in a carefully organized way. |
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how is modern science rooted in anchient astronomy? |
ancient astronomers were accomplished observers who learned to tell the time of day and time of year to track the cycles of the moon and to observe planets and stars. |
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Why does modern science trace its roots to teh greeks? |
the greeks developed models of nature and emphasized the importance of agreement between the predictions of those mondel snad observations in nature |
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how did the greeks explain planetary motion |
the greek geocentric model reached its culination with the ptolemaic model which explained apparent retrograde motion by having each planet move on a small circle whose center moves around earth on a larger circle |
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how did compernicus, tycho, and kepler challenge the earth centered model? |
copernicus created teh sun centered model to replaace the ptolemaic model but still used perfect circles tychos acurate naked eye observations provided the data needed to improve on compernicus' model kepler developed a model of planetary motion that fit tychos data. |
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what are keplers three laws of planetary motion |
the orbit of each planet is an ellipse with the sun at one focus as a planet moves around its orbit it sweeps out equal areas in equal times more distant planets orbit the sun at slower aver speeds obeying the mathematical relationship p2=a2 |
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how did galileo solidify the copernican revolution |
overcame remaining objections to teh copernican idea of earth as a plent orbiting the sun. |
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how can we distinguish science from nonscience? |
science generally exhibits three halmarks a) explanations for observed phenom that rely solely on natural causes b) science progresses through the creation and testing of models of nature that expain the observations as simply as possible c) a scientific model must make testable predictions about natural phenomena that owuld forse us to revise or abandon the mode if the prediction did not agree with the observations |
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what is a scientific theory? |
a simple and powerful model that explains a variety of observations using just a few general principals and has been verified by repeated and varied testing |
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how is astrology different froma stronomy? |
astronomy is a modern science that has taught us about the universe. astrology is a serch for hidden influences on human lives based on teh apparent position sof planets and stars in the sky and does not follow the tenets of science |
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does astrology have scientific validity? |
have shown astrology predictions do not prove to be accurate more than we can expect by chance. so, no. |
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1) How did an ancient Egyptian “hour” compare to the one we use today? |
b) It varied in length depending on the seasons |
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2) How did Eratosthenes determine the size of the Earth? |
a) Measuring the distance between two cities and considering the position of the |
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3) Ptolemy created an astronomical model that allowed for very accurate |
d) His model had the Earth as the center of the solar system. |
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4) During the Dark Ages, a time when scientific thinking was rapidly regressing in |
c) The Middle East |
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5) What was Nicholas Copernicus’ most notable contribution to modern day |
b) He proposed a simplified Heliocentric model of the solar system |
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6) How did Tycho Brahe contribute to the field of Astronomy? |
Brahe observed distant objects and used the method of parallax to compare their |
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7) How did Johannes Kepler contribute to Astronomy? |
c) He determined that planets move in ellipses, and proposed Kepler’s Laws of |
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8) Which of the following is not a possible orbit in the context of Kepler’s First Law? |
A planet moving in an ellipse would have the Sun at one focus of the ellipse. A circle is |
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9) Kepler’s Second Law tells us that a planet with an elliptical orbit will: |
Kepler’s Second Law formally states that a planet will sweep out equal areas in equal |
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10) Kepler’s Third Law relates the following characteristics of a planet: |
c. |
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11) How did Galileo contribute to modern Astronomy? |
Galileo greatly improved the power and precision of the telescope, allowing him to see |