Too Close For Comfort Trivia Quiz

Answer: the distance from Earth to Neptune

Estimation of distance is accurate as long as you are familiar with the measurement being estimated. You know the distance between your thumb and forefinger, and have driven the distance between the two nearest cities, yet nothing can compare to the distance between two planets in the Solar System. I'd recommend looking this one up in a book or journal.

Answer: odometer

The odometer measures the distance the car has driven by measuring the magnetic field the rear transmission creates while spinning. In layman's terms, the faster the car goes, the more distance you travel and the stronger the magnetic field. Therefore, the odometer will spin faster indicating that your car has gone a farther distance.

This phenomenon will ultimately decrease the value of the car. Economics, it's a science stronger than Physics.

Answer: stopwatch

Since velocity (speed) is simply distance per unit time, when driving in your car you can see at what speed you're driving, even if the windows are opaque. All you need to know to find out how far you've driven is the time you've spent at a certain velocity, and then you just have to multiply them together and voila!

A word of caution: Make sure that there are no buildings, cars, trees, people, camels, and other solid objects in your path before attempting this at home.

Answer: Ammeter

An ammeter is a device that measures the current in an electric circuit, the amount of charge per unit time through a point of reference. Meter simply comes from the Greek word "metron" meaning "to measure".

Parsecs are units used to measure distances in space. In the Bible, Noah built his Ark based on cubits. Apparently it was big enough, as he did survive the deluge. Finally, to measure the radius of an atom, or the distance between atoms, we often use Angstroms.

Distance measurements have many odd and assorted units. Rare units like famns, archins, kens, barleycorns, chains, and others can be found. Other units like light-years, caliber, leagues, spans, you may have heard of, but never known exactly how far they measure. The US uses the imperial measurement system, which uses feet, inches and miles. The metric system is more common in the rest of the world.

The animal society is against the switch to the metric system; if inches were abolished, we'd have to rename the inchworm the two-and-a-half-centimeter worm, quite a mouthful.

Answer: Standard candles

Standard candles are a family of stars and objects that no matter where they are in the universe, they will always exhibit the same luminosity. Thus, we can calculate their absolute magnitude, and using the distance modulus formula, we can derive their actual distance by observing their apparent magnitude.

Objects which are standard candles include RR Lyrae stars, Cepheid variables, and type Ia Supernova are all examples of luminous objects that are commonly use as distance finders. Main sequence fitting is another use of standard candles, though this is not as accurate as the previous examples.

An astrophysicist's rule of thumb, never leave a standard candle burning in an unattended room, it may go nova on you all of a sudden.

Answer: diffraction

Diffraction was first studied by Thomas Young when he shone light through two slits. Instead of seeing two patches of light appear on the screen behind him, what was observed was a regular pattern of light and dark patches. This led to more experiments with different numbers of slits, different frequencies of light and different shapes of slits. This was one of the many phenomena that added to the importance of quantum theory.

This is true for any quantum particle, if you try to drive your car (the one with the blacked-out windows) through the two slits, you will end up splattered on the wall. If the pieces of your body are small enough (this means your velocity was closer to relativistic than usual), you may be able to notice a diffraction pattern!

Answer: redshift

Redshift is a common phenomenon that spectroscopic astrophysicists use to prove the fact that the universe is expanding, and, by proxy, defend the "Big Bang" model for the creation of the universe. By looking at the Balmer lines for known elements commonly found in far-away stars and galaxies, like hydrogen and helium atoms, we can measure the shift in their absorption lines, and infer the distance to the object.

This is a reliable measurement, limited only by how well we can resolve cosmic spectra, and how accurately we can measure absorption lines.

Answer: Max Planck

The Planck length is considered natural because it uses the three fundamental constants of the universe: the speed of light, the Newtonian gravitational constant and Planck's constant. When using dimensional analysis to end up with length units, you end up with a unit that is 1.6162 x 10^-35 meters in length. This is defined as the Planck length at which all the laws of physics unite.

The Planck length is so short that it's easy to fall off of a slab of wood at that specific length, hence the term "to walk the Planck."

Answer: triangulation

Triangulation (and also trilateration) is the measurement of distances using triangles and trigonometric identities. When you know the angle from your point to two known points, and the distance between them as well, the calculation to find out where you are is a simple one, using the laws of sines and Pythagoras' theorem.

The next step in the process is to walk all the way up the mountain you were measuring and check to see if you were correct, a step all theorists skip, so the triangulation method hasn't ever ACTUALLY been proven.

Answer: Sperm whales

Sperm whales and marine vessels all use sonar to locate themselves in and under the water. Sonar is actually an acronym which stands for 'SOund Navigation And Ranging', and uses sound waves to detect the distance from otherwise invisible objects immersed in the water. Sonar was invented back in 1905, and was used primarily to detect the submerged part of icebergs, before the first World War turned it to military purposes.

A sound wave is emitted by the sonar rangefinder, and it waits for the wave to reflect off of another body. Since the speed of sound in a liquid is faster than in the air, and its speed is known, the distance to the submerged objects around a submarine or a sperm whale can be measured.

This still doesn't solve the problem of which of the two has the right of way...