(17 Nov 2009)
A couple of things that might help you with this
assignment:
(1) You can assume, for problem #2, that Venus' atmosphere
has the same density as the Earth's atmosphere. This
is not really true, of course, and there are ways to
do this problem that do not require that you make this
assumption, but you can make this assumption if it
makes your life easier and you want to do it this way.
(2) The volume of a thin shell is 4*pi*r^2*h where
r is the radius of the sphere and h is the thickness
of the shell.
(3) For problem 4, it is probably easiest if you use
both R_star and a in kilometers. Also, 273 K is equal
to 0 Celsius, and 373 K is equal to 100 Celsius.
(4) Finally, the radius of the Earth is definitely
6400 km, not 6700 km. My bad.
Last modified 17 Nov 2009