PES Skill Sheets.book - Capital High School

Skill Sheet 19.1: Charles Richter
1. Answers are:
theoretical physics—a branch of physics that attempts to
understand the world by making a model of reality, used
for rationalizing, explaining, and predicting physical
phenomena through a “physical theory.”
seismology—The study of earthquakes and of the
structure of the Earth by natural and artificial seismic
waves.
seismograms—A written record of an earthquake,
recorded by a seismograph.
magnitude—the property of relative size or extent
(whether large or small)
seismographs—An instrument for automatically detecting
and recording the intensity, direction, and duration of a
movement of the ground, especially of an earthquake.
2. Sample answer: I would feel proud that a leader in the field
considered me above anyone else. It would be disappointing
to lose the opportunity to work with Dr. Millikan, but if he
considered me ready for the job, maybe he felt I had learned
all I could and was ready to move on.
3. Richter responded by taking on routine tasks and making
something extraordinary out of something ordinary.
4. Dr. Beno Gutenburg
Skill Sheet 19.1: Jules Verne
1. Verne’s novels offered people an opportunity to go on
voyages into unknown realms of the world, and even space.
Tales like these are still popular today, but during Verne’s
time, fewer people had the opportunity to travel. Verne’s
novels pulled readers away from their everyday life and
allowed their imaginations to consider futuristic inventions
and machines that were far removed from life in the
nineteenth century.
2. From Earth to the Moon, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,
Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in 80
Days, and The Mysterious Island have all been made into
movies several times. Around the World in 80 Days won five
academy awards in 1956 including best picture and best
cinematography.
3. The bar exam is a written test that must be passed in order to
qualify a person to practice law.
Skill Sheet 19.2: Alfred Wegener
1. He developed an interest in Greenland when he was a young
boy. As an adult scientist, he went there on several scientific
expeditions to study the movement of air masses over the
polar ice cap. He studied the movement of air masses long
before the common acceptance of the jet stream. He died
there during a blizzard on one of his expeditions just a few
days after his fiftieth birthday.
2. He and his brother set the world record for staying aloft in a
hot air balloon for the longest period of time, 52 hours.
3. Wegener studied and used several different fields of science
in his work. His main areas of expertise were astronomy and
meteorology, however, he also explored paleontology
(fossils), geology, and climatology as he gathered evidence
for his drifting continent theory.
4. Fossils of the small reptile were found only on the eastern
coast of Brazil and the western coast of Africa. Since there
was no way that the reptile could have crossed the Atlantic
Ocean, Wegener figured that those two continents must have
been connected when that reptile was alive.
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5. Answers will vary. Correct answers include:
a. Mercalli scale
b. Moment magnitude scale
c. JMA scale (Japanese Meteorological Agency)
d. MSK scale (Medvedev, Sponheuer and Karnik)
e. European Macroseismic scale
f. Rossi-Forel scale
g. Omori scale
6. Some scales measure intensity (like the Mercalli scale), while
others measure magnitude (like the Richter scale). Intensity
scales measure how strongly a quake affects a specific place,
while magnitude scales indicate how much total energy a
quake expends. Also, many times different countries have
different building codes or standards of construction. Some of
the scales used to measure earthquakes are based on
traditional construction materials and techniques, which can
vary around the world. These scales may be used to define the
quake resistant construction guidelines adopted by different
countries or regions with different occurrences of
earthquakes.
7. Seismograph and seismometer are usually interchangeable, as
they both describe devices designed to do the same thing.
Seismometer seems to be the more modern term.
4. Victor-Marie Hugo (February 26, 1802–May 22, 1885) is
recognized as the most influential French Romantic writer of the
19th century and is often identified as the greatest French poet.
Two of his best known works are Les Misérables and The
Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Verne must have been inspired to
meet the most famous and well-respected author of his time.
5. Airplanes, movies, guided missiles, submarines, the electric
chair, air conditioning, the fax machine, gas-powered cars,
and an elevated mass transit system are among his best
known. One of his most eerily true-to-life ideas appears in
both From Earth to the Moon (1865) and All Around the
Moon (1870). In these stories an aluminum craft launched
from central Florida achieves a speed of 24,500 miles per
hour, circles the moon and splashes down in the Pacific. A
century later Apollo 8, made of aluminum and traveling at
24,500 miles an hour, took off from central Florida. It circled
the moon and splashed down in the Pacific.
5. Coal can only be formed under certain conditions. It can be
formed only from plants that grow in warm, wet climates. Those
type of plants could not grow in either England or Antarctica
today. That means that at some time, England and Antarctica
must have been located somewhere around the equator where
those type of plants could survive, and they must have moved
away from the equator to their present locations.
6. Answers will vary.
7. Wegener was a relatively unknown scientist at the time, and
geology wasn’t even his field of expertise, yet he was proposing
a theory that went against everything that scientists at the time
believed about geology. The most famous scientists alive at that
time attacked him viciously and called his theory utter rot! Also,
even though he had gathered what appeared to be a lot of
evidence to show that the continents had indeed moved over
millions of years, he could never explain how or why that
happened. He could never explain what driving force could be
powerful enough to move continents.
8. Answers will vary.