Finally some progress on the astronomy (S282) TMA

Quite why it is, I don’t know but the astronomy TMAs have all taken me an awful lot more time than expected to do and, of course, the final one is no different.

It seems that I’m not the only one with this problem as an awful lot of people seem to be having serious difficulties with this one. All for the same reason too: it appears to be seriously difficult. And yet, once it clicks, it’s actually quite easy to do.

The key thing to do is to basically ignore that astronomy label and consider it purely as an exercise in mathematics for almost all of the questions. Thus, if it asks you to calculate the radius of some orbit what you need to do is to look for some equation in one of the chapters of the book referring to that question that can be used to calculate the radius in terms of the information that you have to hand. That seems even more so for the seemingly much more complicated cosmology question. After all, at first glance when you’re asked to calculate the critical density of the universe, I’m sure that most peoples’ reaction would be “eh?”, but it’s very easy to answer that one (no, really, it is).

Which “just” leaves me with about 1 1/2 questions to do. I’d have done them this evening but with the spurt of progress my brain went into meltdown!

As to whether my answers are actually right or not, who knows? but at least I have some kind of answer when yesterday I was seriously contemplating handing it in with questions unanswered.

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