Assignment-1: Order of magnitude & basic concepts

Course: Astrophysics & Cosmology (Special paper) Semester III, M.Sc (Physics) St. Xaviers College & J.C.Bose Institute, 2011 - 2013 Course Instructors: Dr. Suparna Roychowdhury Date: 8th August, 2012

1. Initially, a system B has 2 1025 particles, each having internal energy u0,B = 0.35 eV and ve degrees of freedom. System A has 1026 particles each having u0,A = 0.40 eV and three degrees of freedom. After these two systems are combined, the situation for particles of system A doesnt change but the particles of system B have u0,B = 0.25 eV and three degrees of freedom each. If the two systems are both at temperature 290 K before they are mixed, what will be the temperature of the combined system after mixing? 2. Calculate the degeneracy pressure of an electron gas of density . Use e mH as the average mass of a degenerate free electron. 3. Estimate the temperature inside a thermonuclear explosion in which deuterium nuclei fuse in pairs to form helium nuclei. Assume that each nucleus has three degrees of freedom and that 10 percent of the deuterium fuses into helium. Assume that the average drop in u0 upon fusing is 1 MeV per nucleon. 4. Consider an ideal monoatomic gas of 1026 atoms. (a) What is the internal energy of this system at a temperature of 27C? (b) If the temperature is raised by 1C, by what factor does the number of accessible states increase? (c) What is the increase in entropy in this case? 5. Consider the chemical reaction 2A + B C. You produce 1 mole of C at 500 K and atmospheric pressure. The molar heat capacities of these substances at atmospheric pressure are all zero between 0 K and 10 K and constant above 10 K, being given for T 10 K by CA = 19.4 J/(mole K), CB = 35.9 J/(mole K), CC = 67.7 J/(mole K) . (a) How much heat will be released in this reaction? (b) How can the system lose entropy and not violate the second law? 6. Estimate the mass of the Sun given the earth-sun distance and the period of revolution of the earth around the sun. 7. The angular diameter of the Sun is 32.5 min. Estimate the distance a 1 rupee coin has to be placed in your line of sight for it to cover the Sun completely. (Diameter of a one rupee coin is 2.5 cm). 8. A star is observed to have a ux of 0.2 1026 W m2 Hz 1 in the U lter at 360 nm, 0.4 1026 W m2 Hz 1 in the B lter at 440 nm and a ux of 0.3 1026 W m2 Hz 1 in the V lter at 550 nm. Estimate the stars temperature based on this data. (Hint: Filters are basically wavelength windows which lets radiation of some particular to pass through. The stellar spectrum can be t by a Black body at a particular temperature, T .) 9. A moons closest distance from a planet is 3,00,000 km and its farthest distance is 5,00,000 km. What is the semi-major axis of its elliptical orbit? What is the semi-major axis of an asteroid orbitting the Sun with a period of 64 years? 10. Deduce the mass of the Earth given the acceleration due to gravity at the surface of the Earth? 11. The luminosity of the Sun, L = 3.9 1033 erg s1 . (a) Calculate the energy which falls per unit time per unit area perpendicularly on the Earths surface. This is also known as the solar constant. (The earth-Sun distance is 1 AU) (b) Assuming Kirchos law to be valid, estimate the surface temperature of the earth from the data above. 12. The cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) has a black body spectrum at 2.7 K . Estimate the number density of CMBR photons.

13. When the Big-Bang Universe was a factor of Z smaller in linear dimension (say Z = 1000), these same photons were in a volume Z 3 smaller, and (we will learn later) their temperature as also larger by a factor Z. What was the radiation density of the Universe then (Z = 1000), both in ergs / cm3 and also in units of proton masses (times c2 ) per cm3 ? 14. Suppose the mean density of protons and nuclei today is 2 1031 g cm3 . At what redshift factor Z was there more energy in photons than in protons? (Again use E=mc2 in making the comparison.)