Various Bits of Trivia

• 43 people took the final.
• For the essay questions on the final, 24, 42, 24 and 39 people answered question 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively. (So only one person didn't go for #2. Interesting.)
• Problem questions
  • (29, 1, 17, 3) — Actually, this was only a problem on version B and D, oddly. (Note that it appeared early on those.) It rather looks like people didn't check to see if the question had changed, on this one.
  • (3, 23, 14, 29) — Neptune gets an factor of 17 in it's force on the Sun, but it loses a factor of 900 (30²) for being farther away. So in the end, Earth kicks its tail.
  • (5, 7, 26, 6) — This was a bit of a trick. Since the Moon always keeps the same face towards the Earth, Earth is always in the same place in the sky.
  • (13, 18, 4, 15) — Venus, it has virtually no tilt to its spin axis.
  • (26, 20, 27, 2) — None has yet been found with Hubble. They've all used ground-based telescopes and Doppler measurements. Since Hubble is constantly moving (it's in orbit!), it would be a very poor platform for this sort of search. And imagine is no good, since their stars are so much brighter than the planets are.
• I was wrong. The Ring Nebula is actually roughly barrel shaped, according to recent research. So it's not a spherical shell. And Mizar is the brighter star and Alcor is the dimmer one, not the other way around. Thank you to everyone whose write-ups corrected me on these two points.