A few quickies from a non-physicist:
1. "The greater the rate of vibration or rotation, the higher the temperature of the substance." They used an example of a metal rod with one end in a camp fire that gradually heats all the way to the other end. Does this mean that in that case, the molecules within the rod are vibrating? Because later on in the book it says the molecules actually aren't moving and that confuses me.
The atoms that comprise the molecule are constantly vibrating (or jiggling, to borrow Feynman's word). So the molecules are also jiggling. The molecules in a metal bar form a 3D lattice, and so long as they don't jiggle out of their places in the lattice, the bar remains intact. In that sense, it may be said that they don't move. The temperature of the bar is actually a measure of how much jiggling the atoms are doing. If they acquire enough energy they'll jiggle right out of their lattice positions, at which point the metal will become molten.
7. Is there a formula for Farenheit to Kelvin or do you always have to change Fahrenheit to Celsius, then onward to Kelvin?
Yes, you do:
Celcius = 5*(Fahrenheit - 32)/9
Kelvin = Celcius + 273.15
but it's one formula:
Kelvin = 5*(Fahrenheit - 32)/9 + 273.15
11. In the case of convection, the air closest to the earth heats and expands, causing buoyancy and making it rise. But is the air in the top of the stratosphere is closest to the sun, why would it not heat first and simply stay at the top?
Actually, it does stay on top. Generally speaking, through the 800 miles of atmosphere, the temperature does increase with altitude, but not consistently.
The convection that you're talking about takes place in the troposphere (the lowest 11 miles of atmosphere). In this region temperature generally decreases as altitude increases. Above that is the tropopause, which is static. Above that, see:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/planets/earth/Atmosphere.shtml
12. I thought we had not explored past the Milky Way yet, but I saw a picture of the galaxy in my book. Have we truly gone far enough out to take pictures of the Milky Way from outside the galaxy?
This might help to get a better perspective:
The most distant spacecraft is Voyager 1, launched in 1977. On August 28th 2009 it was about 10,300,000,000 billion miles away - that's about 0.0018 light years. The edge of the Milky Way (by a somewhat fuzzy definition)is about 20,000 light years. If Voyager were on a beeline for the edge, it would reach it around 11,000,000 AD.
Those picks were, needless to say, composed from data gathered from Earth, or near Earth.
14. "Note that there is nothing unique about the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum other than the fact that our eyes and nervous systems have evoled to see this energy." Does that mean that we could one day evolve to see ultraviolet, X-rays, etc? If so, do we have theories of what it would look like?
There is a tendency (though far from a guarantee) for chance mutations that prove useful to survival and reproduction to survive and be reproduced. Many species have thus evolved eyes sensitive to wavelengths that are invisible to us. It's not impossible that our distant descendants, or at least a branch thereof, might see ultraviolet, but that would occur only through the appropriate mutations occurring amid conditions in which the ability proved an asset...to survival and reproduction. What would such eyes look like? Not very different, I suspect. Birds eyes can see ultraviolet, and they look pretty similar to ours.
