On the exam, you will be asked to choose to answer ONE essay questions. The actual exam will have FOUR questions on it, selected from this set of essay questions:
1. In your house, are the lights wired in series or in parallel? Explain your answer, including pictures.
2. Examine pictures 1, 4, 7, and 8 on the attached "Batteries" illustration. Which light bulbs will light? If you think a light bulb will not light, say why not. (I am not posting the pictures on the web, but they will depict various arrangements of batteries, one wire, and one bulb).
3. Describe the way that your house is wired, from the 240-volt electric cable coming into your home all the way to the various types of appliances which use electricity. Feel free to use pictures.
4. You are visiting a friend's apartment and having a good time. Your friend lives in a very old house which has been divided up into apartments, and your friend's kitchen, instead of having a regular kitchen stove in it, has a two-burner electric hot plate in it. Each burner of the hot plate uses 1500 watts. The refrigerator in your friend's kitchen draws 720 watts. Your friend is cooking dinner. He starts cooking soup, using one burner of the hot plate at full power, and the refrigerator turns on. Nothing unusual happens. The refrigerator turns off, but then he starts frying steak on the second burner, using the second burner at full power. All the lights in the kitchen go off, along with the burner. What happened? What can your friend do so this doesn't happen in the future?
5. You are visiting a friend who is suffering from a sinus headache. She has run out of "Tylenol Sinus," which is her usual headache remedy, but she still has the bottle. She sends you to the drugstore to buy something in a very small quantity since she really believes in the effectiveness of Tylenol Sinus for her. The label which is on the empty bottle of Tylenol Sinus and the labels of five possible pain relievers are shown below. Which pain reliever or pain relievers - you can buy more than one - should you buy for your friend? (Copies of the labels will be made available with the exam, but are not posted here.)
6. During this part of the course we have discussed three common ways in which scientists seek to make sense of the universe: using data from experiment or observation to find out what is going on in the world, seeking patterns in the data, and using these patterns to develop explanations as to why the patterns are the way that they are. Use what we have done in class regarding the behavior of different elements to describe how the periodic table, and the behavior of different elements in it, illustrates or fails to illustrate data, patterns, explanations, and (if you wish) other ways of thinking in science. (Hint: Remember that in class we examined, first, the different kinds of solid elements that exist in nature, and we then examined the behavior of different metals when they were put in a flame or put in water.)
7. You are writing a science fiction novel and are wanting to describe life on a planet which was quite unlike the earth. You have decided that this planet contains no oxygen, but since oxygen is such an important element on earth, some element should take the place of oxygen. You know from your contacts with astronomers that elements in the first three full rows of the periodic table are much more common than other elements - in fact the amount of each element drops sharply once you get past iron, element 26). For this reason you decide to restrict your attention to the first 26 elements in the periodic table.
The question is, what element should take the place of oxygen, and why did you pick this element?