Moon Phases
100: What is a phase of the moon?
Answer: A change in the sunlit area of the moon as seen from Earth
100: What is an eclipse?
Answer: When the shadow of one celestial body falls on another.
100: What is gravity?
Answer: An attractive force between two objects.
100: What is Kant's nebular hypothesis?
Answer: It suggests that the solar system formed from a cloud of dust and gas.
200: What happens during a full moon?
Answer: The entire sunlit side of the moon is visible from Earth.
200: Describe a solar eclipse.
Answer: It occurs when the moon moves between the sun and Earth, blocking sunlight.
200: How does gravity affect planets?
Answer: It keeps them in orbit around the sun.
200: Describe Laplace's refinement of Kant's model.
Answer: He suggested that the sun cooled and became compact, causing it to spin faster, leading to the formation of the solar system.
300: Name the phase when the moon is not visible.
Answer: New moon.
300: What is the umbra during an eclipse?
Answer: The darker, inner part of the moon's shadow.
300: What is the law of universal gravitation?
Answer: The force of gravity is proportional to the masses of the objects and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
300: What role do impact craters play in understanding the solar system?
Answer: They provide evidence of collisions between objects in space.
400: What is a waxing crescent?
Answer: The first visible thin slice of the moon that is growing larger.
400: Name the two types of solar eclipses.
Answer: Total solar eclipse and partial solar eclipse.
400: How does distance affect gravitational force?
Answer: Gravitational force decreases as the distance between objects increases.
400: What is a protoplanetary disk?
Answer: A rotating disk of dense gas and dust surrounding a newly formed star.
500: How long does it take for the moon to complete one cycle of phases?
Answer: Approximately 29.5 days.
500: Explain why not everyone sees a solar eclipse.
Answer: Only people in the path of the moon's shadow can see it.
500: Why do some planets have a spherical shape?
Answer: Their mass creates enough gravitational pull to form a spherical shape.
500: Explain how satellites orbit Earth.
Answer: Gravity keeps them in orbit, balancing the centripetal force with the gravitational pull.