ASTR200 Winter Term 1 Assignment 4, 30 marks
Due 12:00 pm Friday, Oct. 8, in Gradescope.
Your answers must be clearly explained and neatly presented, or marks will be deducted.
Make sure to include your name and student number on your submission.
1. Rotational Support.
In the lecture on star formation, we talked qualitatively about how a collapsing cloud
gains ”rotational support” and stops collapsing radially when the tangential velocity
becomes equal to the Keplerian orbital velocity at that radius. In this question, you
will derive this result. Start from the expression for the radial acceleration of a particle
in the cloud at some distance r from the centre:
d2 r dvr GMr
2
= vr =− 2
dt dr r
(a) Add in a term for the centripetal acceleration, in terms of r and the angular
velocity ω.
(b) Write an expression for the conservation of angular momentum using ω and the
moment of inertia I, thinking about the initial conditions labeled ”0” as in class.
(c) How does I scale with r? Ignoring the changes in cloud shape from sphere to
disk, which will change the prefactor in that scaling, write an expression for ω in
terms of ω0 , r0 and r.
(d) Replace ω in your equation in part (a) with what you have just derived, move
the dr to the right-hand side, and integrate from r0 to rf . Make and explain
suitable approximations to derive an expression for rf in terms of ω0 , r0 , Mr and
constants.
2. Meteorite dating.
(a) The half-life τ for 87 Rb to decay to 87 Sr is 49.44 Gyr (more accurate than what
was given in class). This means that in 49.44 Gyr, half of any given sample of
87
Rb will have decayed to 87 Sr. Given that radioactive decay can also be described
by N = N0 e−λt , find the relationship between τ and λ and compute λ for 87 Rb.
(b) You are a planetary scientist in another planetary system much like ours, and are
attempting to figure out how long ago solids condensed out in your system. You
take several samples from a chondrite meteorite that has landed on your planet
and find the following ratio values:
Make a graph (graph paper is fine), find the slope and intercept, and determine
the age of this planetary system along with the initial ratio of 87 Sr/86 Sr. Comment
on differences and similarities relative to our Solar system.
87
Sample Rb/86 Sr 87
Sr/86 Sr
1 0.7477 0.7639
2 1.4267 0.8144
3 1.2017 0.7972
4 1.0158 0.7835
3. Spectral Line Identification The following figure shows the spectra of two extremely
hot stars. In this question you will make use of the Bohr atom model to identify
the main spectral lines detected as labelled with letters A–J. Review Caroll & Ostlie
Chapter 5.1–5.3 if you need to.
Here the y-axis shows the flux, and the spectra are “normalized” to their continuum
emission, i.e., the spectra are divided by the blackbody emission, such that where
there is no absorption or emission lines the spectra would be flat. 1 Angstrom (or 1 Å)
corresponds to 10−10 m.
AB C D E F G H I J
(a) Identify which lines A-J correspond to the presence of hydrogen in the atmosphere
of these two stars. Explain the reasoning used to arrive at your answers.
(b) Consider the longest wavelength absorption line on the shown spectra that is not
associated with hydrogen. Helium is the second most abundant element in the
universe, after hydrogen. These stars are so hot that Helium is usually in ionized
form, i.e., the Helium atoms would be positively charged as they lose one of the
2
electrons to high-energy collisions. The ionized Helium atom thus consists of a
single electron around a two-proton nucleus that can be described by the Bohr
model.
i. What is the wavelength of the the longest wavelength line not associated
with hydrogen on the shown spectra?
ii. Show that if this spectral line is due to an electron transitioning between two
energy levels in the Helium atom, it must be from a initial state that has
principle quantum number n < 5.
iii. Based on your answer to Q3b (ii), determine the Helium transition responsible
for this spectral line, i.e., work out the initial and final principle quantum
numbers of the electrons.
