KASSANDRA BRUZOLA GRADE VI 5 ARCHIMEDES

COLOR OF THE STAR IF IT IS THE HOTTEST OR COLDEST.

Wein's Law
Matter emits radiation, regardless of its size or composition. This principle was first proposed by Max Planck, who used the idea of a "black body" to describe something that could perfectly absorb and emit radiation, but it was German physicist Wilhelm Wein who studied thermal radiation more in-depth. Wein showed that all objects emit radiation, but as an object gets hotter, the wavelength of the radiation it emits becomes shorter and shorter. Very, very cold objects (somewhere just above absolute zero) emit radio waves. As temperatures increase, the radiation emitted moves up the electromagnetic spectrum into microwave, infrared and then visible light: red, orange, yellow, green and blue. If the object continues to grow hotter, it will glow white. Then it will leave the range of visible light and pass into ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays.

Stellar Colours
The colour of a star is primarily a function of its effective temperature. You should recall that a star approximates the behaviour of a black body radiator. As a black body gets hotter its colour changes. If you were to heat a solid shot put it would first emit radiation in the infrared region. Further heating would see it glow a dull reddish colour. With more heating it could eventually glow orange, yellow, white and eventually blue-hot. Ultimately if it were hot enough a black body emits most of its energy in the ultraviolet region. Although stars are not perfect black bodies this relationship between temperature and colour still applies to them. The colour that we see is usually an additive combination of the emissions from each wavelength. Hot stars appear blue because most energy is emitted in the bluer parts of the spectrum. There is little emission in the blue parts of the spectrum for cool stars they appear red. Even though the Sun's peak emission wavelength (Wien's Law) corresponds to the green part of the spectrum, its colour appears pale yellow due to the relative contributions of the different parts of its Planck curve to the overall colour. The table below shows the approximate colour and temperature range for stars.

Spectral Class

Temperature (K)

50,000 28,000 28,000 10,000

10,000 7,500 - 7,500 6,000

6,000 - 4,900 4,900 3,500

3,500 - 2,000

RedTable 4.3: Colour -Temperature Colour Blue Bluewhite White Whiteyellow range for stars. Colours are for Main Yellow Orange Sequence (V) mid-Spectral Class (5).

Even though stars have different colours, our perception of stellar colours in the night sky is poor.

KASSANDRA BRUZOLA GRADE VI 5 ARCHIMEDES

DANTES PEAK

Plot
Set in the fictional town of Dante's Peak, Washington, located in the northern Cascade Mountains, the film is somewhat based on the real-life eruptions of Mount St. Helens in 1980 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991. The film begins with the eruption of an unnamed volcano in Colombia during which volcanologist Dr. Harry Daltons (Brosnan) fiance (Walker Brandt) is killed as the couple tries to evacuate. Four years later, Harry is tasked with investigating possible volcanic activity in the Northern Cascades mountain near the town of Dante's Peak, which has not erupted for 7000 years. Later, two backpackers (David Lipper & Heather Stephens) are skinny dipping in a hot spring when the water begins to boil, killing the couple. In Dante's Peak, the town is receiving an award for being "The second most desirable place to live in the United States, population under 20,000" and celebrating its annual "Pioneer Days Festival". Harry meets with mayor Rachel Wando (Hamilton) who, along with her children, Graham (Foley) and Lauren (Smith), accompanies Harry to the mountain's "high lake" to check the waters acidity. After checking the acidity and picking up the mayor's ex-mother in law, Ruth (Hoffman), the five of them head to the town's hot springs where they discover the bodies of the two dead backpackers. Harry calls a town meeting to discuss putting the town on alert during which his boss, Dr. Paul Dreyfus (Charles Hallahan), decides against the alert. Despite strongly opposing the decision, Harry remains in the town to help Paul and the USGS crew Greg, Terry, Nancy, and Stan (Heslov, Trutner, Field, and Ma) evaluate the mountain. Two weeks pass before Paul decides to pull the plug on the assignment and relocating the team back to their home base. Harry decides to spend one more night with Rachel before he leaves with the team. After returning to Rachel's home, a glass of water she retrieves from the faucet is a burnt orange and reeking of a foul smelling odor. Rachel and Harry both check the town's water supply plant and discover that the acidity of the mountain has breached the water supply for the entire town and concluding an imminent eruption. Afterwards, seismic activity and temperatures on and around the mountain begin to increase at an alarming rate, and Harry and Paul decide to evacuate the town. During the town meeting alerting the citizens to evacuate, the eruption begins, causing a stampede. Earthquakes bring down telephone lines and buildings, while simultaneously the massive quakes cause the elevated freeways, the only main routes leading out of town, to collapse, trapping the citizens and causing mass chaos. Meanwhile, the mayor's children take her car and drive it up the mountain to Ruths cabin in hopes of evacuating her. As the eruption continues, the USGS crew prepares to leave. Seismic readings indicate that minor eruptions are taking place all over the mountain, and that they are

running out of time. Harry and Rachel head up the mountain after the children. Debris and rubble wipe out the road behind them, hindering any means of going back. They find Ruth refusing to leave. Harry tells Paul to pack up the team and evacuate before the mountain blows, but his radio dies. Down in the town, the mountain has expelled large amounts of ash and most residents have evacuated. As Harry and Rachel argue with Ruth for her to come with them, a lava flow engulfs all three cars and parts of the house. The five of them flee to the nearby lake and take a metal boat across the river. It quickly becomes apparent that acidic content of the mountain has turned the lake to sulphuric acid and is corroding through the metal boat. As they near the shore the boat's motor fails. Ruth, realizing that the boat will not make it, jumps out to pull it along to the pier before it sinks. She wades through the acidic water screaming, but dragging the boat along to try and save the rest of them. After they reach the shore the five of them head down the mountain towards the town. The USGS crew, meanwhile, is evacuated by the National Guard along with any remaining citizens. Paul gets on the two-way to warn Harry that the rising temperatures of the mountain have caused the ice and snow to melt, and that the resulting mud flow is preparing to take out the river bridge which is now the only way out of town. Paul drives the USGS van, while the other four ride in Humvees. The Humvees make across the failing bridge, but Paul cannot and is washed away in a lahar. Further up the mountain, Ruth and Rachel reconcile before Ruth dies from her injuries. At a ranger station, Harry hot wires a truck and drives the family down the mountain. When they arrive at the USGS operations center in the town, Harry realizes that the mountain is about to experience a catastrophic eruption. As he leaves, he picks up E.L.F. (Extreme Low Frequency), a tracking device designed by NASA. Back in the truck, he and the family seek safe haven in the town's abandoned mines (ironically, Rachel had grounded Graham near the beginning of the movie for being in the mines, saying that they were "too dangerous") as Dante's Peak finally explodes and a giant pyroclastic cloud engulfs the town. The truck makes it safely into the mine but the town is destroyed, leading the USGS crew to believe Harry has been killed. (One piece of film footage from this sequence is apparently so realistic that it has made it's way into more than one documentary about actual volcanic eruptions.) Inside the mine, Graham leads the way, as most of the abandoned mines served as a hideout for him and his friends, and shows the survivors all of his supplies. Remembering that he left E.L.F. in the truck, Harry leaves to activate it. While in the truck, Harry is injured and trapped by falling rocks and has to reach the tracking device without causing a fatal cave-in. Eventually he reaches it and activates it. The device flashes for "one or two days" before the four are rescued from the mine. After being rescued from the mine, Harry meets the rest of his crew, who tells him that Paul didn't make it. On board a helicopter, Graham asks Harry if he really meant what he said in the mine about taking the family fishing and Harry confirms it with the words, "Sure did." He and Rachel clasp hands and kiss and Harry tells the helicopter pilot that they are ready to go, and they fly off.