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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Part 4, Chapter 13.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Richard Owen coined the term paleontology as the study of prehistoric life forms and called the giant animals dinosaurian, meaning:
(a) Large reptile.
(b) Ancient animal.
(c) Enormous creature.
(d) Terrible lizard.

2. When French physicist Henri Becquerel accidentally left a packet of uranium salts on a photographic plate, what happened?
(a) The plate rusted.
(b) The plate became magnetic.
(c) The salt crystals melted into the plate.
(d) An emission from the salts ruined the plate.

3. About how many stars can be seen from Earth using a two-inch telescope?
(a) 300,000.
(b) 30,000.
(c) 3 million.
(d) 3,000.

4. Astronomer Edmond Halley believed that the distance from the Earth to the sun could be deduced from the:
(a) Position of Mars.
(b) Transits of Venus.
(c) Size of solar flares.
(d) Distance to the moon.

5. Astronomer Edmond Halley approached mathematician Sir Isaac Newton to get his help figuring out why planets:
(a) Vary in size.
(b) Orbit the sun in ellipses.
(c) Spin on their axes.
(d) Are round.

Short Answer Questions

1. In 1903, who won the Nobel Prize in physics for discovering radioactivity?

2. According to James Ussher, an Archbishop of the Church of Ireland who was alive in the 1600s, Earth had been created:

3. What components were central to the apparatus that Henry Cavendish used to determine the density of Earth?

4. Arranged side by side, how many atoms can fit across the width of a typical human hair?

5. Harry Hess determined that, in the Atlantic, the ocean floor is:

(see the answer key)

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