Astrophysics (ADV) Assignment #1

Sean Dawson 440179919

April 7, 2016

Question 1
a)

i)From the denition of optical thickness, we have:

= nx

Now, when something it optically thick, we know that = 1. Note, in the

above formula, we dene x to be the thickness of the rings and is the cross
sectional area of an individual particle.
Solving the equation above with = 1 gives:
n=
= n =

1
x

1
= 1.59m3
20 (0.12 )

I.e. the density of the particles is 1.59 per cubic metre.

To nd the average distance between the particles, we rst consider the
volume occupied by each particle.
If 1.59 particles occupies 1 cubic metre, this means that the volume occupied
by each particle is the inverse of n.
I.e.
V =

But we know that V =

4r 3
3

1
1
=
n
1.59

, so this means that

r3
1
=
3
1.59
Solving this for r gives r = 0.53m.
4

We are given that the diameter of the particles is 0.2m, we may say that the
particles are very close to touching.
1

2
2
ii) The volume of the rings is V = router
d rinner
d. Where router is the
radius of the outer ring and rinner is that of the inner ring. d is the thickness of
the rings.
We substitute in the values given in the question.

V = ((1.4 108 )2 (6.8 107 )2 ) 20 9.4 1017 m3

We know that the number of ice chunks are:

N = number density V

Using the result from part a), we sub in our values again:
N = 1.59 9.4 1017 = 1.5 1018

I.e. in the rings, we have 1.5 1018 ice chunks.

We assume that each of the chunks will have the same radius (0.1 m). So
the total volume of the unied ice will be the volume of each ice ball multiplied
by the number of ice balls.
4
Vcombined = N Vsingle = 1.5 1018 (0.1)3 = 6.27 1015 m3
3

b)
We rst calculate the area of the beam.
A = r2 = (0.001)2 = 3.1 106 m2

We use this to calculate the number of particles that are impacted by the
beam (N ). It is easily seen that N = surf ace density A
= N = 1024 3.1 106 = 3.1 1018

That is, we have 3.1 1018 possible targets.

We are given that the cross-sectional area for the reaction is = 8
1052 m2 (for a single particle).
Multiplying this for the total number of particles gives:
= N 8 1052 = 3.1 1018 8 1052
= 2.5 1033 m2

We can now calculate the probability:

p=

2.5 1033

=
= 8 1028
A
3.1 106

This is the probability of one such reaction occurring. We now calculate the
probability of such an occurrence per second.
2

Figure 1: Plot of temperature (in K) versus the fraction of n2 on n1

We have photons incoming at a rate of r = 5 1015 s1 . Hence, we may say
that the probability of such a reaction occuring per second is:
ps1 = r p = 5 1015 8 1028 = 8 1013

I.e. we have (on average) 8 1013 reactions occurring per second.

To calculate the time between reactions, we take the inverse of this:
t=

1
ps1

1
= 1.25 1012 s 4 104 yrs
8 1013

This means that this data cannot be gathered experimentally. It must be

done either computationally or theoretically.

Question 3 (advanced only)

a)

b)
c) From the graph (and from the code), we can say that the temperature at
which the number of excited atoms peaks is at approximately T 8700K . This
3

Figure 2: Plot of the temperature versus the ratio of ionised to unionised atoms.

Figure 3: N2 on Ntot as a function of Temperature.

temperature falls perfectly into the range of spectral class A stars. This implies
that spectral class A stars show the strongest hydrogen lines.

Question 4 (advanced and normal)

a) From the question, we interpret this mathematically as :
U=

3kT
2

I.e. the energy required to bring together the protons is provided by the
thermal energy. We now substitute in our expression for U:
U=

3
1 q1 q2
= kT
40 r
2

But since we are smashing together two protons, we can say that q1 = q2 =

1.602 1019 C

We re-arrange the above equation and solve for T .

T =

2 1 (1.602 1019 )2
3k 40
r

b) So r = 1015 . We substitute this into the formula we found in part a):

T =

2 1 (1.602 1019 )2
3k 40
1015

Plugging this into a calculator we get that T = 1.11 1010

We are given that the temperature of the sun is Tc 1.5 107 K , whilst our
calculated value is T = 1.11 1010 . This implies that the central temperature
of the sun is o by 3 orders of magnitude (1000 times o)!! But since the sun
shines, this means that there has to be quantum tunnelling taking place to allow
the fusion to occur.
c) We may say that the kinetic energy equals the barrier height when
KE = U
1 q2
p2
=
2m
40 r

Where p is the momentum of the momentum of a particle, m is the mass of

a proton and q is the charge of a single proton.
Now, from the question, we know that r = and = hp = p = h .
Substituting these values into the above equation, we arrive at:
h2 1
1 q2
=
2m 2
40

Re-arranging the algebra, we get:

=

h2 20
m q2

Now, from part a), we derived that:

T =

2 1 q2
3k 40 r

If we substitute in our value r = into this equation for T , we nd that:

T =

2 q 2 2mq 2
q4 m
=
3k 40 4h2 0
12k 2 20 h2

d) Substituting the various values into this formula for T , we obtain

T = 1.96 107 K

This is a much closer value to the central temperature of the sun than the
result we got in part b). This implies that our assumption, that QM tunneling
takes place, is most likely correct.