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


*** PRELIMINARY EDITION ***


Examination Format

The examination will be structured with multiple-choice, short-essay, and matching sections. Given my experience with previous classes, I am confident that you will have plenty of time to think and plenty of time to write.


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 -- up to but not including the section titled "The Earth-Sun System."

  3. Rawls' Theory of Justice.

  4. Daly's Steady-State Economics

  5. Remarks that are related to the history presentations

  6. Hardin's Living Within Limits

  7. Notes on Modern Physics and Ionizing Radiation -- Chapters I and IV with the exception of those sections in that are called out in the Announcements page.


Topics

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


Terms and Acronyms

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

  1. alpha particle

  2. beta particle

  3. chemical reaction

  4. combustion

  5. conservation of energy

  6. conservation of momentum

  7. deuterium

  8. diffraction

  9. diffusion

  10. external costs

  11. fission

  12. fusion

  13. gamma rays

  14. gravitational

  15. heat engine

  16. heat flow

  17. heat pump

  18. infrared

  19. internal costs

  20. irreversible

  21. kinetic

  22. LLE

  23. neutrino

  24. neutron

  25. ozone

  26. penetration depth

  27. phase change

  28. photon

  29. productivity

  30. radon

  31. refrigerator

  32. regulatory ratcheting

  33. regulatory turbulence

  34. reversible

  35. tritium

  36. ultraviolet

  37. work

  38. X-rays


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 radioactive heavy metal that is also chemically toxic.

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

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

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

  5. 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.

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

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

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

  9. A nuclear transformation in which a large nucleus splits into two small nuclei.

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

  11. A photon emitted by a nucleus as it relaxes from an excited state (typically after radioactive decay).

  12. A photon emitted by an atomic electron as it relaxes from an excited state (either because the atom was bombarded with ionizing radiation that ejected an inner-shell electron or because the nucleus changed charge by decaying radioactively).

  13. A physical process in which the entropy increases.

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

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

  16. A process that does not change the entropy of the closed, isolated system.

  17. A single quantum of radiant electromagnetic energy.

  18. 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 of fission fragments.

  19. An isotope of Hydrogen whose nucleus contains one proton and one neutron.

  20. An isotope of Hydrogen whose nucleus contains one proton and two neutrons.

  21. 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.

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

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

  24. 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.

  25. Loss of Life Expectancy.

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

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

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

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

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

  31. 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.

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

  33. 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.

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

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

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

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

  38. The transfer of energy by mechanical means.

Return to Entropy Home Page

Dick Piccard revised this file (http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~piccard/entropy/study2.html)on February 22, 2006.

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