Week of April 16, 2018

Remember to read past the Cool Science of the Week to find your assignments. 🙂

Cool Science of the Week
People pity Pluto. It used to be a planet, and now it’s considered a dwarf planet instead. Do you know the reason? It’s because in the region of Pluto’s orbit are many other objects approximately the size of Pluto. Moreover Pluto is smaller than many moons in our solar system, including our own moon! Despite Pluto’s demotion, there is still considerable evidence to suggest that we are a nine-planet solar system, although we haven’t found the ninth planet. Why do we think it’s there, then? Because of EXACTLY what we talked about in unit 6: Universal Gravitation! There are gravitational effects in the outer solar system that suggest a large body exists beyond Neptune’s orbit. Scientists are searching for Planet Nine, which is likely about ten-times the mass of Earth, right now! 


Image from Scientific American

This Week in Physics
Our SLO is Wednesday, so please be sure to review units 1-6. For Thursday please take notes on PODCAST 2: Electric Force (Coulomb’s Law) if your class did not already do so. We will complete assignment 2 and will hopefully be able to quiz over goal set 2 by Friday or next Monday.