Jennifer is inside her windowless space station laboratory and finds herself increasingly pulled to the floor. What experiment can she perform inside the lab to decide if she is feeling the effect of an acceleration or an effect of gravity?

What will be an ideal response?


None. The Equivalence Principle says no experiment performed in a closed system can distinguish between the two effects.

Physics & Space Science

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Process of Science: If any single test of a scientific hypothesis contradicts it, the hypothesis must be revised. (Assume that you've ruled out errors in the testing process; that is, the test result really does contradict the hypothesis.)

Indicate whether the statement is true or false

Physics & Space Science

A certain spherical asteroid has a mass of 3.5 × 1016 kg and a radius of 8.8 km. What is the minimum speed needed to escape from the surface of this asteroid? (G = 6.67 × 10-11 N ? m2/kg2)

A) 23 m/s B) 16 m/s C) 520 m/s D) 730 m/s

Physics & Space Science

If an electron is determined to be at x = 2.000 cm ± 0.0010 cm, what is the minimum uncertainty in the x component of its velocity? (melectron = 9.11 × 10-31 kg, h = 6.626 × 10-34 J ? s)

What will be an ideal response?

Physics & Space Science

Assume the size of the Sun is represented by a baseball with the Earth is about 15 meters (150 million km or 8 light minutes) away. How far away, to scale, would the nearest stars to the Sun be? Choose the closest answer

a. about the distance between New York and Boston (330 km) b. 100 meters away c. about the distance across the United States from New York to Los Angeles (4300 km) d. about the distance across 50 football fields (50 × 100 m)

Physics & Space Science