initial mass functions - 2024 ACF Nationals

Question

Contrary to intuition, these functions do not vary systematically with properties of a galaxy. For 10 points each:

[10h] Name these functions written as a piecewise power law, in which one piece is the original Salpeter power law with an exponent of negative 2.35.

ANSWER: initial mass functions [or IMFs]

[10m] An initial mass function, or IMF, is used to derive the rate of this process from the amount of ionizing radiation emitted by a galaxy. The rate of this process scales with some power of the gas surface density according to the Kennicutt–Schmidt law.

ANSWER: star formation [or word forms of star-forming; or descriptions of stars being created; accept star formation rate]

[10e] Unresolved binaries complicate the determination of IMFs because the relation of stellar mass to this quantity breaks down. Unlike magnitude and brightness, this quantity is an intrinsic measure of radiant power.

ANSWER: luminosity [prompt on L]

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Summary


2024 ACF Nationals	2024-04-21	Y	24	15.83	96%	58%	4%

Data


Brown	Berkeley A	0	10	0	10
Chicago A	North Carolina A	10	10	10	30
North Carolina B	Chicago C	0	10	10	20
Rutgers	Claremont Colleges	0	10	10	20
WUSTL A	Columbia A	0	10	10	20
Ottawa	Columbia B	0	10	10	20
Michigan	Georgia Tech	0	10	10	20
Stanford	Indiana	0	10	10	20
Illinois	Johns Hopkins	0	0	10	10
Cornell B	Kentucky	0	0	10	10
NYU	Maryland	0	0	10	10
Harvard	McGill	0	10	10	20
Cornell A	Minnesota A	0	10	10	20
Minnesota B	Truman State	0	0	10	10
Chicago B	Purdue	0	10	10	20
South Carolina	Chicago D	0	10	10	20
Northwestern	Toronto A	0	0	10	10
Toronto B	Arizona State	0	0	10	10
Berkeley B	Vanderbilt	0	0	10	10
Penn	Virginia	0	0	10	10
Florida	WUSTL B	0	10	10	20
Waterloo	Texas	0	10	10	20
Yale A	Iowa State	0	0	10	10
Duke	Yale B	0	0	10	10