Review questions

• Can you recognize the following positions on the HR diagram: Main sequence, horizontal branch, asymptotic giant branch, red giant branch, helium flash and white dwarfs?
• Do you remember approximately what phases the Sun (or any low-mass star) will go through? What is the source of energy at each stage? What is its path on the HRD?
• High-mass star evolution:
• structure? what is burning at the center?
• why is it that you can't fuse iron?
• can you say what are the steps that lead to the explosion? what type of supernova will that be? can you explain with a few words what is each of the following:
• core collapse
• photodisintegration
• neutronization
• what are the evidences that our understanding of SNII are correct?
• Systems where mass transfer is important (what is mass transfer? where does it happen? at what stage of stellar evolution?)
• Algol-type binaries (what's weird about them? visualize the system)
• "Classical" novae
• What is a type I supernova? when does it happen?
• What is the Chandrasekhar mass?
• Nucleosynthesis (i.e. formation of elements); where and in what conditions did they form?
• Hydrogen
• Helium
• Carbon
• Elements up to iron
• Elements more massive than iron
• Nucleosynthesis/2
• for an element ⁵⁶₂₆X, what does the 26 represents? what does the 56 represents?
• if you add neutrons, do you change the subscript or the superscript?
• if you add protons, do you change the subscript or the superscript?
• if some neutrons decay into protons via inverse beta decay, do you change the subscript or the superscript?
• what is the inverse beta decay?
• do you know how to find an element on the periodic table given its number of protons?