This week's questions help us understand how the planets in our solar system turned out like they did.

1. What is the collective name that we give the 4 inner planets (that are small)?  What is the name we give to outer 4 planets (that are large)? 

what are some other major differences -- besides size -- (like at least 4?) between these 2 groups of planets?
 

2. For your planet, find

    a) the calculated blackbody temperature in Kelvin (using the formula we came up with in class today);
        you are welcome/encouraged to check with your table partner to see that he/she got the
        same answer before submitting this.   Make sure that you check units!

    b) the ACTUAL temperature; in general, each planet has its own chapter (from 8 to 16; some
        chapters have more than one planet; the moon has its own), and somewhere near the front of the
        chapter is a data table, which will list the planet's temperature...

        asteroid (Ceres) table is exempt from part b (only)

oh, and please tell me your planet name also!!

3) In the formula for planet temperature that we found in class today, the ONLY source of planetary
    heating that we considered was that provided by absorbed sunlight. 
    However, most planets have other heating sources (other ways of acquiring energy). 
    There are 6 of these heating sources that occur at least somewhere in the solar system. 
    Can you tell me at least 2?  (because 2 of these ways came up in class today in a totally different
    context; if you read chapter 7 carefully, you know that several were mentioned therein; one you
    should know from general cultural literacy since its importance on earth is currently being debated)

I did my own work on this JIT.

Click on the      button to send the results to Kolena

or click     to start over.