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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Vesto Slipher's work at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona led him to discover that distant stars are moving away from us, with the farthest stars moving the fastest, suggesting that the universe is:
(a) Shrinking.
(b) Stable.
(c) Oscillating.
(d) Expanding.

2. Tired of climbing hills to study clouds, C. T. R. Wilson invented what?
(a) Indoor cloud chamber.
(b) Cloud simulation computer program.
(c) Balloon-propelled cloud camera.
(d) Cloud telescope.

3. A hundred years before Einstein's math analyses confirmed the existence of atoms, this self-educated scientist suggested everything is made up of tiny, unchangeable particles:
(a) Ernest Rutherford.
(b) John Dalton.
(c) George Hadley.
(d) Hans Geiger.

4. Plate tectonics refers to:
(a) The mechanism behind sand dunes.
(b) The motion of the Earth's crust.
(c) The mechanism behind hurricanes.
(d) The motion of the Earth's atmosphere.

5. When did the last supervolcano erupt on Earth?
(a) 74,000 years ago.
(b) 1,100 years ago.
(c) 9,000 years ago.
(d) 23,000 years ago.

Short Answer Questions

1. When radiation was first discovered, people thought it must have:

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

3. What campaign did geologist Clair Patterson take on?

4. Pluto is the first planet to be discovered by an:

5. How do today's professional astronomers search for supernovae?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe what happens in a supernova.

2. Summarize what the author says about why it took so long to discover that Pluto has a moon.

3. Explain Albert Einstein's theory of space curvature using a tennis ball and an ant.

4. What did geologist Harry Hess discover about the Atlantic Ocean in the 1960s that validated the idea that the continents are drifting apart?

5. Where do earthquakes occur?

6. When scientists first tried to grasp the idea of atoms, what did they disagree on?

7. What are quarks? How are they categorized and classified?

8. What happened when, in 1896, Henri Becquerel accidentally left a packet of uranium salts on top of a wrapped photographic plate?

9. Describe what the Archbishop James Usser and the Reverend William Buckland concluded regarding the age of Earth.

10. Describe what happened to an enormous thighbone discovered in New Jersey in 1789.

(see the answer keys)

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