Study Guide for Final Exam
Tier III 415A - R. D. Piccard

Examination Format

The examination will be structured with multiple-choice, short-essay, and matching sections. You will have 120 minutes to work, compared to only 50 minutes for each midterm, so it will be somewhat more than those two exams combined. Given my experience with previous classes, I am confident that you will have plenty of time to think and plenty of time to write. The short essay questions will be a larger proportion of the total effort than they were in the midterms.

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Links to On-line Resources

These include the lecture notes for several of the book reviews and physics lectures.

1. Timeline of Historical Events and People

2. Huwe and Piccard's Notes on Entropy and Human Activity

3. Rawls' Theory of Justice.

4. Daly's Steady-State Economics

5. Perrow's Normal Accidents

6. Remarks that are related to the history presentations

7. Hardin's Living Within Limits

8. Notes on Modern Physics and Ionizing Radiation -- only those sections called out in the Announcements page's oldest entry.

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Topics

The topic outline is easy to extract from the "Tentative Schedule" section at the end of the course syllabus.

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Terms and Acronyms

This list is incomplete. It also includes some terms that we did not talk about.

1. alpha particle

2. base load

3. Becquerel

4. beta particle

5. biomass

6. biosphere

7. Bohr

8. central collector

9. chemical reaction

10. combustion

11. conservation of energy

12. conservation of momentum

13. deuterium

14. diffraction

15. diffusion

16. external costs

17. fission

18. fusion

19. gamma ray

20. geothermal

21. gravitational

22. heat engine

23. heat flow

24. heat pump

25. Heisenberg

26. hydroelectric

27. infrared

28. insolation

29. insulation

30. intermediate load

31. internal costs

32. iodine

33. irreversible

34. kinetic

35. LLE

36. Malthusian Limit

37. neutrino

38. neutron

39. normal accident

40. ozone

41. peak load

42. penetration depth

43. phase change

44. photon

45. photovoltaic

46. productivity

47. rad

48. radon

49. refrigerator

50. regulatory ratcheting

51. regulatory turbulence

52. reversible

53. tritium

54. ultraviolet

55. work

56. X-ray

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Definitions and Concepts

These definitions and concepts by no means exhaust the material we have covered. They do include some we have not done in class. There is no particular correlation between their numbering and the numbering of the list of terms and abbreviations, above (each is in mindless alphabetical order).

1. A chemically inert ("noble") gas that radioactively decays to a heavy metal that is both radioactive and chemically toxic.

2. A chemically reactive form of oxygen whose molecules contain three oxygen atoms, instead of the usual two.

3. A device that directly converts incident light into electric current; typically made from highly purified silicon with controlled impurities added, using technology similar to electronic integrated circuits ("computer chips").

4. A form of energy associated with mass raised to high altitudes.

5. A form of energy associated with mass in motion.

6. A gaseous element, which is a necessary part of the human diet, which concentrates in the thyroid, and that is routinely created in a radioactive form as a result of nuclear fission.

7. A gaseous element, which is a necessary part of the human diet, which concentrates in the thyroid, and that is routinely created in a radioactive form as a result of nuclear fusion.

8. A high-energy photon created as an excited atomic electron relaxes to a lower-energy state (from an excited state created either by having an inner-shell electron knocked out or by having the nuclear charge changed by radioactive decay).

9. A high-energy photon created as an excited nucleus relaxes to a lower-energy state (typically after radioactive decay).

10. A machine that takes in energy in the form of heat, transforms some of that heat to mechanical work, and expels the rest of the heat.

11. A machine that uses mechanical work to remove heat from a cold place and force even more heat into a warm place.

12. A machine that uses mechanical work to remove heat from a cold place, expelling that heat and more into the surrounding environment.

13. A material that partially or fully obstructs the flow of heat or of electricity.

14. A nearly massless neutral particle always created in the process of radioactive beta decay.

15. A nuclear transformation in which a large nucleus splits into two smaller nuclei.

16. A nuclear transformation in which two small nuclei combine to form a single larger nucleus.

17. A process, such as burning, in which a solid fuel is transformed into gaseous smoke.

18. A process, such as melting, in which the physical state of a sample is altered without any change in its chemical composition.

19. A physical or chemical process that does not change the entropy of the closed, isolated system.

20. A physical or chemical process that increases the entropy of the closed, isolated system.

21. A single quantum of radiant electromagnetic energy.

22. A system for generating electricity from sunlight that works by reflecting the sunlight from multiple, steered mirrors, focussing it to raise the temperature of a working fluid that drives a heat engine to turn the generator shaft.

23. A sub-atomic particle that has about the same mass as a proton, but has zero electrical charge, that is sometimes ejected from a nucleus during radioactive decay.

24. A unit of absorbed dose of ionizing radiation, equivalent to 0.01 Joule/kilogram.

25. A unit of activity of a radioactive source, equivalent to one decay per second.

26. An unfortunate event that is not at all unusual.

27. An unfortunate event whose severity arises in large part from the complex interactions of tightly coupled sub-systems.

28. Another name for a common helium nucleus, containing two protons and two neutrons, used when it has been ejected from a nucleus during radioactive decay.

29. Another name for an electron, used when it has been created and ejected from a nucleus during radioactive decay.

30. Generation of electric power from the gravitational energy of falling water.

31. Generation of electric power using heat directly from the interior of the Earth.

32. Light whose photons have so little energy that they cannot start the chemical reactions in your retina, and therefore cannot be seen.

33. Light whose photons carry so much energy that they are absorbed in the cornea, lens, or liquid interior of the eyeball, never reaching the retina, and therefore cannot be seen.

34. Loss of Life Expectancy.

35. Primarily harvested plant matter, especially when used as a fuel.

36. The amount of output of an economic activity divided by the amount of one of the input resources consumed by that activity.

37. The consequences of a business process that are paid for by the people involved.

38. The consequences of a business process that do not show up in the bookkeeping.

39. The continual tightening of regulations by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

40. The demand for electrical power that is used to decide how many coal-burning plants or "wind turbine farms" to build.

41. The demand for electrical power that is used to decide how many central-receiver solar thermal power plants to build.

42. The demand for electrical power that is used to decide how many internal combustion gas-turbine or pumped-storage hydroelectric installations to build.

43. The intensity of solar radiant energy reaching a specified place (typically in Watts/m²).

44. The isotope of hydrogen that includes one neutron and one proton.

45. The isotope of hydrogen that includes two neutrons and one proton.

46. The maximum population that can be supported, with everyone on the brink of starvation.

47. The principle that energy can be changed from one form to another, but neither created nor destroyed.

48. The principle that a moving object tends to continue to move at the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an external force.

49. The process by which the different wavelengths of light are separated when they reflect from a surface covered with uniformly spaced grooves.

50. The process by which a group of molecules in a fluid spread out, through random microscopic motions, from an initial location of high concentration, until they are uniformly distributed throughout the volume of the fluid.

51. The retroactive application of changed regulations when designs have already been approved and construction has begun.

52. The scientist who is responsible for explaining nuclear fission in terms of the so-called "liquid drop" model of the nuclear fluid.

53. The scientist who is responsible for explaining the inherent limitation of simultaneous measurements.

54. The thickness of a target material required to reduce the intensity of a photon beam to 50% of its initial intensity.

55. The thickness of a target material required to reduce the intensity of a photon beam to 37% of its initial intensity.

56. The total of all living matter on or near the surface of the earth.

57. The transfer of energy by contact between two objects of different temperature.

58. The transfer of energy by mechanical means.

Dick Piccard revised this file (http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~piccard/entropy/study3.html)on March 8, 2006.

Please E-Mail comments or suggestions to "piccard@ohio.edu".