Activity In this activity, you will examine the difference between opinions, facts, theories, and laws. To do so, examine the table
below. Carefully read each example in the table before answering the questions that follow.
opinions
• Anthracite coal is much better than bituminous coal.
• Mercury's orbit is the most fascinating of the rocky planets in the solar system.
• People should pay closer attention to global climate change.
facts
• Jupiter rotates on its axis every 9 hours and 56 minutes.
Pressure decreases as you move upward in the atmosphere.
• Water expands when frozen.
theories
• Continental drift and seafloor spreading are caused by the motion of tectonic plates that move around relative to one
another
• The entire universe arose from a single hot, dense point that began rapidly expanding approximately 13.7 billion years ago.
• Organisms have changed and diversified over time because of shifting frequencies of heritable traits by means of natural
selection
laws
For any closed system, the mass of the system must remain constant over time.
The attractive force between two objects is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to
the square of the distance between them.
• In an undisturbed layered rock formation, every layer is younger than the one below it and older than the one above it.
Part A
Based on the examples in the table, how do opinions differ from facts?