Sound Waves
What type of wave is a sound wave: transverse or longitudinal?
Longitudinal
When a beam of light hits a smooth mirror and bounces off, what is that process called?
Reflection
What do we call the role an organism has in its environment, including what it eats and how it interacts?
Niche
What causes day and night on Earth?
Earth's rotation on its axis
What is the name of the planet we live on?
What do we call the number of wave compressions that pass a point each second for a sound wave?
Frequency
Name the three things that can happen when light meets a material.
Reflection, absorption, transmission
Reflection - bounces off a surface
Absorption - energy is taken in
Transmission - passes through a surface
What term describes a group of the same species living in the same place?
Population
What causes the apparent motion of the sun across the sky each day?
Earth's rotation makes the sun appear to move across the sky
Which planet is know for its rings?
Saturn
If you make a sound with higher frequency, how does the pitch change?
What is Higher Pitch
High Frequency -> High Pitch
Low Frequency -> Low Pitch
Which color of visible light has the shortest wavelength: red or violet?
Violet
Explain in one sentence how energy flows through an ecosystem from producers to consumers.
Producers capture energy from the sun and pass it to consumers when eaten.
Name one piece of evidence that shows Earth orbits the sun.
The pattern of the seasons support that Earth orbits the sun.
What is an orbit? Give a short definition in terms of planets and the Sun.
An orbit it the path a planet takes around the Sun due to gravity.
Describe one way the medium (air, water, solid) affects how fast sound travels.
What is refraction? Give a short definition.
Refraction is the bending of light when it passes from on transparent material into another.
What is carrying capacity? Give a short definition.
The maximum population size that an environment can support over time.
How do relative positions of the Earth, moon, and sun cause tides?
The moon's gravity pulls on Earth's oceans creating bulges (high tides); alignment with the sun can make especially high or low tides.
Why do inner (terrestrial) planets differ from outer (gas giant) planets? Give one key difference.
Inner plants are rocky and smaller with thin or no atmospheres; outer planets are larger, mostly gaseous, and often have many moons and rings.
Explain why you can hear thunder after seeing lightning.
Light travels much faster than sound, so we see lightning before we hear thunder; the sound takes longer to reach us.
Explain why white light separates into colors when it passes through a prism.
Different wave lengths refract by different amounts of prism material, spreading white light into colors.
Describe one way humans can change an ecosystem and a likely effect on local species.
Example: Deforestation removes habitat -> fewer forest species and possible local extinctions
Explain why we see different phases of the moon over a month.
As the moon orbits Earth we see different portions of its sunlit half, producing phases.
Explain how gravity and distance from the Sun affect a planet's surface temperature.
Planets closer to the Sun generally receive more solar energy and tend to be warmer; stronger gravity can help hold a thicker atmostphere which can trap heat (greenhouse effect), so both distance and gravity/atmosphere influence surface temperature.